Sounds like Slaver
by BovinePirate
Summary: Sequel to Rhymes with Shmaliens. Join Xander as he stumbles his way through his new career.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Sitting in his cluttered office, Dr. Daniel Jackson was trying to read. In spite of the fact that what he was trying to read consisted entirely of pictographs, it was usually something he'd find fairly easy. The reason that wasn't the case today was sitting behind him, somehow looking both curious and disinterested.

"What'cha doin'?" Xander Harris finally asked after five agonizing minutes of silence.

"Reading," Daniel answered curtly, still trying to focus on the symbols in front of him.

"What about?" Xander persisted, craning his head to further peer over Daniel's shoulder.

"The pseudo Mongolian people of Bat-Erdene don't have yaks," Daniel answered, finally looking up from the aged animal skin as he explained. "This should tell us why."

"Do we care about that?" Xander asked, furrowing his one visible eyebrow.

"Knowledge his power," Daniel responded as he quickly turned back to his study.

"Strength is power too, but you don't see bodybuilders working out their jaw muscles, do you?"

"Well, they would if… something," deflating as his mind drew a blank, Daniel closed his eyes and finished, "We don't know what'll be useful someday."

"I do. Yaks aren't important."

"Actually, yaks have been vital to the survival of various cultures throughout history. They provide meat, milk, and fur and are wonderful beasts of burden."

As Daniel prepared to educate on the illustrious history of yak domestication, Xander merely frowned and said, "But we don't need milk. We need ways to defend against space lasers… I haven't been here long, I imagine space lasers would be a problem, right?"

"More like energy blasts," Daniel answered thoughtfully.

"Either way, I can't imagine yaks being much help," Xander continued with a shrug.

For a moment, Daniel imagined a giant yak charging down a Goa'uld mother-ship in space. Then he shook his head and asked, "What do you want, Xander?"

"A space laser," Xander answered with an energetic smile and a confident nod.

"Why are you here?" Daniel tried again, remembering that wording was important when talking to Xander's kind.

"I'm bored," Xander declared with no less energy than before.

"Then go bother someone else."

"I can't," Xander answered with a despairing frown. "Sam and Jack just left for that meeting or whatever off world. Won't be back for a few days."

"Already?" Daniel asked, his eyes going wide. "What day is today?"

"I don't know, we're underground."

Daniel turned his gaze to the clock on the wall. He must've been too absorbed in his research again. Time just passed so quickly. He wondered how long it'd been since he'd eaten. Probably a while, but he didn't feel that hungry and he had things to read…

As Daniel gravitated back towards his research and was about to start reading again, Xander loudly demanded, "We should do something fun!"

"I'm busy," Daniel responded, only turning half his body away from his work to rebut Xander. "Go hang out with Teal'c."

"He's meditating," Xander replied dejectedly. Then he crinkled his nose and added, "Plus, I think he has a bowel problem. It's not great."

"He doesn't have bowels."

"Then that's the problem! I'm pretty sure people are supposed to have bowels."

Daniel sighed and swiveled his chair around to fully face Xander. "If you're bored, go find something to do. Anything. I'm busy."

"There's nothing left to do!" Xander declared emphatically throwing his hands into the air. "I've been stuck underground for almost a month now! I've run out of T.N.G. episodes and I've already watched through the original trilogy three times with Teal'c."

"They still aren't letting you out yet?" Daniel asked, furrowing his brows. Xander may be a civilian, but Jack vouched for him. That meant something around here. Besides, Daniel was still technically a civilian. That meant he had more freedom than the rest of the base staff, not less.

"That was part of the agreement," Xander answered with a shrug. "I could join the project, but I wouldn't be allowed to leave the base or go on missions until I was fully certified."

"You aren't fully certified? Even I'm allowed out in the field and I have no idea how to kill people with splinters."

"I think the whole pyramid thing was what clinched it for you," Xander responded. Then he shook his head and continued, "But that's not the problem. I was able to get through the firearms stuff somehow. It's just… some bureaucratic stuff. Dotting 't's and crossing 'I's. That kind of stuff."

Watching Xander's gaze shift away as his answer trailed off, Daniel narrowed his eyes and skeptically asked, "You still haven't passed your psyche eval?"

Xander pursed his lips and his lonely eye glared at nothing as he answered. "I have another appointment in an hour, but that man is impossible. He always says, 'come see me again when you're ready to talk.' You know me. I'm always talking. I'll talk for hours. He's just not listening."

"What exactly have you been saying?"

"That I hate my mother. That I hate my father," Xander answered, punctuating each statement with an energetic flail. "I think I've been clear that I'm willing to blame all my problems on whoever he wants, but he's not buying it."

"Radical idea, have you tried speaking honestly?"

"Being honest to a shrink?" Xander asked, finally meeting Daniel's gaze to look at him as if he were crazy. "Who in their right mind would do that?"

"I think it's supposed to be the other way around."

"…That do would mind right their in who?"

"People in their right mind don't have to lie to shrinks." As Daniel leaned back in his chair, he tried to think of how long it would take for Xander to officially join their ranks. At this rate, it'd be until the next invasion attempt. Then they'd all have to work together and he'd earn their trust by… Daniel quickly stopped thinking about that. He started to feel like he was jinxing the earth.

"Shrinks aren't to be trusted," Xander responded, obstinately crossing his arms over his chest. "They just want to get under you skull and manipulate you. A friend told me that once, and she's been in a few mental institutions. She'd know."

"A friend from an asylum-" Daniel started to rebut, then he remembered his own grandfather and closed his mouth.

"Anyway," Xander continued when it was clear Daniel wasn't going to, "If I want to actually be sent out into the field, being honest is the last thing I want to try."

"Didn't you just admit you were crazy?"

"I said I might look crazy to the untrained eye," Xander answered, raising his chin in smug victory.

"The untrained professional eye."

"Exactly."

Daniel shook his head and pushed up his glasses to rub his eyes. "This place has people regularly come home with actual snakes inside their brains. I think you'll find the definition of 'abnormal' is pretty broad. Just try a little openness. What's the worst that could happen?"

Xander theatrically rubbed his chin in thought. Then he answered, "I was going to say the head snake thing, but I guess the mountain could collapse and kill us all."

Daniel closed his eyes to resist looking towards the ceiling. Then he swiveled his chair back to his research and said, "Whatever. Go prepare your script for your meeting, then. I'm busy."

Sitting down on the unholy abomination of cloth and metal that some would call a chair, Xander spent almost two minutes trying to keep his ass cheeks from falling asleep. Eventually, he gave up and turned his eye on the man sitting on the other side of the small, but official desk.

"Are you comfortable?" The thin man asked, his face, as always, painted with a meaningless half-smile.

"No," Xander answered irritably, crossing his arms over his stomach.

"I can wait then," Dr. Something Something responded.

On principle, Xander refused to remember the psychiatrist's name, so he just called him doctor. As a bonus, that let him ask "What's up doc?" three times before it got old.

"I'll never be comfortable. Let's just get this over with."

"Why don't you tell me about yourself, then?" The Doctor asked in the same even, professional tone he always used.

"Not much to tell," Xander answered with a shrug, attempting to lean back in his chair before the lumps forced him forward again. "I'm pretty normal."

"If that were true, this wouldn't be our sixth attempt at this, Mr. Harris."

"Xander… and this is our sixth time because you don't believe people when they say things. Nothing to do with me."

"Do you have anything else to add?" The Doctor asked, raising a solitary eyebrow at Xander's harsh response.

"No, I think I'm good."

After a brief moment of silence, the Doctor opened his mouth again, "You're missing an eye."

"I also have ten fingers."

"Why is that?"

'Because my mom didn't drink when she was pregnant… much."

"The eye."

"An accident." Xander answered after a half-second pause to think. "Never stand behind a novice when they're fly fishing. It's dangerous."

"Really?" The Doctor asked, reaching out to grab some notes from his desk. "Because last time you told me you got too close to your pool cue as you were taking a shot and the time before that you said a claw hammer, 'bounced back real hard,'" The doctor replaced the papers and focused back on Xander. "If you're never going to be honest with me, then this will be a very long and arduous process."

"I don't know, must be one of those things you guys always talk about. Repressed memories." Xander dramatically placed one hand on his forehead and leaned back as he continued, "It was just too traumatic, so my mind keeps coming up with delusions to cover it up. Right?"

"Mr. Harris-"

"You know it's Xander! Why do you keep doing that?"

"Why do you keep correcting me?" The Doctor asked back, his smile taking on a more genuine air as he raised his eyebrow again.

"Because it's not my name," Xander responded, refusing to meet that smugly victorious gaze.

"Every single time?" The Doctor goaded.

"I guess I hate my father too… or whatever."

"For once I don't think you're lying."

"Thank you. Also, remove the 'for once.'"

"However, when you talk about him, it doesn't sound like you still hate him much. I read more apathy."

"A lot of things have happened since birth," Xander responded with a shrug.

"Like?"

"Things. Doing things. Making things…" as Xander trailed off, he turned his eye towards the small library behind The Doctor. Then he added, "I can make you some new bookshelves if you want."

"Bookshelves…" The Doctor muttered as he followed Xander's gaze behind himself. When he turned back he asked, "So you're trying to say carpentry made you forget about your daddy issues."

"Daddy issues doesn't sound very clinical," Xander complained dryly. "But the rest sounds about right. You should try it out yourself some time. Woodworking can be very Zen."

The Doctor sighed. Then, after reforming his light smile, he said, "You've been uncomfortable and hostile since you came in here. Why is that?"

"Maybe it's you second guess everything I say with that face that says, 'I think you're a big liar.'"

"Do you have a problem with psychologists?"

"See!? That face, right there!" Xander exclaimed, pointing towards The Doctor's skeptical eyes.

The Doctor gave no response and merely steepled his fingers.

Xander pursed his lips. He hated it when people refused to react to him. That and getting pieces of his body slowly crushed were a couple of his least favorite things. Also sewage. And bug people… and people bugs.

After a few more seconds of silence, Xander finally declared. "The last time one of my friends trusted a psychologist was back in college. It didn't turn out well."

"What happened?"

"Bad things."

"What kind of bad things?"

"The bad kind."

"…enlightening." The Doctor's face took on a distinctly unamused aspect. Then his half-smile returned immediately and he asked, "Can you tell me about these friends of yours?"

"No." Xander answered obstinately.

"Mr. Harris-"

"Xander."

"I don't enjoy keeping you from going into the field, but you have to give me something."

"…My friends wer- are good people." Xander answered slowly, turning his eye to the corner of the room as he tried to both remember and forget. "They spend all their time helping people, but no one ever recognizes that. A thankless job, but someone's got to do it… kind of thing."

"I can relate to that."

"Stop that. We're not bonding."

"So, Mr. Harris-"

"Xander."

"Do you have girlfriend? Anyone like that?"

"I-" Xander tried to say something random and vague, but the words didn't come out. Instead, he remembered… anger, frustration, and sadness all mixed together and poured down into his stomach. Then he tried to distract himself and his mind naturally fell on the last few weeks of mind numbing nothingness. After that, he couldn't stop himself. Shooting from his chair, he shouted, "Dammit! Can't we just be done already!? I've fucked everything up. I always fuck everything up! But the one thing I'm good at is killing things. So let me go through the gate and kill the things that need to be killed. Dammit!"

When Xander heard his own words echo through the room, his blood ran cold. He slowly sank back into his chair and stared at the floor. The more he replayed it, the more he realized he sounded like a serial killer. It wasn't looking good. Maybe if he called up Reilly he could still get out of this, but he felt like it was already more complicated than that.

After a minute of silence, Xander could barely make out the faint scritching of pen on paper. Then something appeared in front of his eye. Once he could focus on it, he noticed it was a form with an illegible signature at the bottom. Xander took the proffered paper and slowly looked up to The Doctor's faintly smiling face.

"With this, we can say you passed. If a bit dramatically."

"Really?" Xander asked incredulously as he turned his gaze back to the form. "Even after that?"

"Mr. Harris,"

"Xander," Xander corrected absently.

"My job here isn't to determine who is and isn't stable enough to join the program. No one willing to work here is stable. At least, not after their third day. My job is to know you well enough that I might be able to tell when you come back possessed by an ancient space ghost."

Xander pondered that. After a moment, he could only come up with one pressing question. "Space ghost?"

"It's more common than you might think."

"Do they start talk shows?"

"A different kind. More the kill all humanity and steal their bodies kind."

"I pretty much figured, but a man can hope."

Barely allowing his smile to widen, The Doctor stood and held out a hand to Xander. Xander followed suit and grasped it. As they shook hands, The Doctor said, "In all honesty, General Hammond told me to give you the approval today no matter how things turned out."

Hearing that, Xander released The Doctor's hand and took a step back. "So this was all a formality, then?"

"It was important. I learned a lot."

"I'd rather you learned nothing," Xander grumbled under his breath.

"You better head to his office. He said to send you there as soon as we were done," The Doctor declared, pretending not to have heard Xander. "I think he has something he wants you to take care of."

Still berating this meaningless charade in his mind, Xander left the office. Once he had, he looked down at the form in his hand. Then he smiled. What he'd heard about the worlds beyond the gate made everything seem a lot less romantic. No floating mountains or oceans of mercury. However, there would be lasers and aliens. That was any man's dream.

Author's note: The first post was short and nothing happened, but I'm dipping my toes in again. To anyone who cares: I'm only going to guarantee one post a week, though it'll hopefully average out to at least two.

P.S. I almost included a reference to Netflix streaming in here, but cut it for flow. That got me thinking: if this takes place after the final season of Buffy, it'd presumably be set in 2004ish. Does anyone care about that as far as ambient technology and pop culture references are concerned, or can I reference things from 2017? If that idea bothers people, then I'll try to hold back on them. Though, there'll still be plenty cause I'm bad at catching that stuff.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I have no claim on either Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Stargate SG-1. They belong to their respective creators.

Chapter 2

After finding the general's office empty, Xander asked around and was redirected to the usual briefing room. Usual because, while he'd only been there once, the room looked the part. Once he arrived at his destination, he found Hammond sitting at the head of a long table, addressing three men. They were distinctly un-soldier-ish. Added together, they looked to be about as strong as one Daniel. Hardly reassuring in a fight against alien… whatevers. That meant they were scientists. Or janitors or clerks or something. Probably scientists, though.

After Hammond nodded met Xander's eye and nodded towards a chair, Xander took a seat. Then Hammond said, "Mr Harris, I trust the evaluation went well?"

"Xander," Xander corrected weakly as he handed over the signed release.

Hammond barely glanced at the paper. Then he nodded and declared, "Then we can get on with the briefing." He stopped and appeared to think about something for a second. Then he turned to Xander again and added, "Sorry if this seems sudden, son, but this mission is time sensitive and looked like the perfect opportunity to get you some experience. Get your space legs, as it were."

"No problem at all!" Xander almost shouted, waving his heads quickly. Catching himself, he recovered and leaned back into his chair as he finished, "I'm excited for the opportunity."

Hammond gave a smile and said, "After three weeks on base, I bet." Then he turned to look around the group as his voice took on a more official capacity. "As I was saying before, a tok'ra by the name of Sha-Wujing recently uncovered a strange data storage device on the planet he rules. After his attempts to decrypt the data failed, he reached out to the Tok'ra who reached out to us. Apparently it's different from normal Goa'uld tech. Since we're more familiar with non-Goa'uld species, they thought we'd have more luck with it."

Xander determinedly kept a blank face. He didn't entirely understand most of what was being said, but he'd seen enough sci-fi to know data was one of the most important things out there.

After looking over Xander's face and seeing none of the confusion hidden underneath, Hammond waved at the three men across the table from Xander and said, "Xander, these are doctors Felger, Coombs, and Meyers. They will be in charge of interfacing our hard drives with the alien data cache. Once they've pulled all the data off, bring it back so our computers can work on it."

Hammond then turned to the scientists and continued, "Gentlemen, this is Alexander Harris. He's new but should be reliable. He'll be your-"

"Sole escort?" Xander asked. He felt like that would hardly be protocol for a military expedition to anywhere. Even going out to get doughnuts… or whatever the military equivalent of doughnuts is.

"Your luggage carrier," Hammond finished, cutting through Xander's expectations.

"What?!" Xander asked, his face freezing in a stiff grin.

"This work requires a lot of heavy electronics to make work. These three won't be able to transport it on their own," Hammond answered with a friendly smile that looked vile to Xander's eye.

"My first adventure through the stars is as a pack mule?!" Xander started to ask, but stopped himself at the last moment. Whatever the job, leaving the base was leaving the base. No matter how much he loved Star Wars, every man has his limit. Variety spices life and all that.

As Xander resolutely held his tongue, the scientist with the uncomfortably eager face stood up and held out a hand. "No matter the circumstances, I have to say I'm excited to be working with you, sir!"

Xander recoiled unconsciously. As far as he could remember, he'd never been respected once. By anyone. Okay, maybe by Dawn and a few of the slayerlings for a little bit, but that was different because it was different.

Xander cleared his throat and tried responding, "I-I'm younger than you. Just Xander is fine."

"You're embarrassing us, Felger," the grouchy man with glasses berated the standing scientist, Dr. Felger. "See, you're even making him uncomfortable and he's a soldier."

"I'm not a soldier," Xander corrected immediately.

"I'm embarrassing you?!" Felger rounded on his still seated companion. "Do you remember the last time I did you a favor, Coombs? Making me wear those fake ears and trapes around the convention center. I don't even know the first thing about Klingons."

"It's Vulcans!" Coombs stood up to point a berating finger at Felger. "I told you we were Vulcans! Why do you keep getting it wrong!?"

"Everyone making color jokes I don't understand," Felger muttered to himself, not even paying attention to his friend's rebuttal. "Who cares if I'm wearing red? It's not like I was gonna go bull fighting after."

Xander could only stare at the two and allow their conversation to wash over him. Like a storm passing above a submarine. It was a strange feeling. He wondered if this is what it felt like to be an outsider among the scoobies. Then he stopped thinking at all and waited for it to end.

"Gentlemen," Hammond's calm, yet reprimanding, voice cut in shortly after. Once the two scientists had embarrassedly comported themselves, he continued. "I trust we wont have any problems completing this mission?"

"N-no sir!" both scientists answered in unison. All the while the third, with the painfully forgettable face, remained silent. As Xander puzzled over the almost non-existent man, he tried to remember the last name Hammond had listed. His brain kept throwing out "Mayo," but that certainly wasn't right. In the end, he resolved to wait until he heard it again. Calling a human being a condiment wasn't the best first impression. Xander understood that much from first-hand experience.

As Xander worried over the last scientist, Hammond took in the team as a whole. Then he declared, "I don't think I need to tell you this mission has some diplomatic implications. I hope I can trust you boys not to cause some inter-planetary incident. Am I right there?"

"Yes, sir!" The three scientists answered, as stiffly as they could.

"Oh, right. Yeah, sure," Xander added, a half beat late.

Hammond made a mildly skeptical face, then he said, "You three, go collect anything you think might be useful for this mission. We don't know much about the tech we're dealing with and there won't be a second trip. Once you're ready, meet in the gate room in an hour."

The three scientists quickly accepted that order and shuffled out of the room. As Xander was moving to follow them, he felt a hand perch on his shoulder and stopped.

As Xander turned to look at Hammond, who was lightly restraining him, Hammond was watching the scientists' retreat. Once the three men were gone and the door had closed, Hammond motioned for Xander to lean in closer. Then he started to speak, "You need to know, this mission is a little more complicated than it seems."

"How so?" Xander asked, recovering some of the excitement he'd lost from the luggage carrier comment.

"Sha-Wujin isn't exactly a Tok'ra," Hammond answered with an uncomfortable expression.

"What does that mean?" Xander asked, furrowing his brow. After a few seconds of contemplation, he resolved that he'd have to stop faking it eventually and added, "Also, what's a Toque Ra?"

"Didn't you read the briefing materials?" Hammond asked, giving Xander a disapproving frown.

"I skimmed them," Xander declared, doing his best to not meet the general's gaze.

Hammond let off a sigh, then he answered, "The Tok'ra are a dissident faction of the Goa'uld. They disagree with the Goa'uld fundamentally and don't want to enslave humanity. They fight the Goa'uld using insurgent and guerrilla tactics. That's what you need to understand for now."

"Makes sense, I guess," Xander responded with an unenergetic nod.

"It's enough for now, but you'll thoroughly read the briefings when you get back."

"So, what's up with this Wang guy?" Xander attempted a refreshing smile as he didn't respond to the General's order.

Hammond gave Xander a disapproving frown before correcting, "It's Sha-Wujin. He'll get offended if you say it wrong."

"Yeah, something, something, something. I got it."

"If he gets offended, he'll probably kill you."

"…I'll let the eggheads do the talking," Xander responded after a few seconds of thought. "No reason for the pack mule to butt in, is there?"

Hammond pinched the bridge of his nose n silent anxiety. Then he continued with the explanation. "As I was saying, Sha-Wujin isn't a Tok'ra. He's an ally of the Tok'ra. He refuses to officially join them, but he absolutely hates the System Lords."

"Who are the System Lords?"

"The de-facto leaders of the Goa'uld."

"Okay… So, where does that leave us?"

"In a complicated position," Hammond let out another sigh. "Since he's not a real Tok'ra, we can't trust him. The Tok'ra assure us that he means us no harm, but it's not like they have any control over him if he does. To make matters worse, the ma- snake is opposed to letting anyone onto his planet. He seems to have a bit of a paranoid streak."

"Don't they all," Xander observed. As he did, he remembered The Mayor's final form. Germophobia and Xenophobia seemed related enough. At least, they shared a few syllables.

General Hammond gave a nod. Then he stared into the corner of the room, looking as if he was recalling some long-past war. "At first he wanted us to do everything remotely. When we convinced him we'd need at least three of our scientists present to get anything done, he refused to allow them any escorts. Took another day of negotiation for him to accept one extra hand to help transport and set up equipment."

"…Sounds tough," Xander said, trying his best to sound sympathetic.

"That wasn't even the worst part," Hammond declared as a resolute frown threatened to cave more wrinkles into his face. "He refused to meet with anyone from Earth at all. Everything had to be done through a Tok'ra messenger. She kept going back and forth through the gate. Probably cost us hundreds of thousands in electricity. Wormhole travel isn't cheap."

"So that's why no actual soldiers are coming along?" Xander asked after ensuring that the General had completed his rant.

"One baggage carrier was the best we could get," Hammond answered with a nod. "You're not even allowed any weapons. I had a hell of a time coming up with who to send. That's when I remembered you."

"Who is expendable," Xander completed cynically.

"Who, by Jack's account, may be our foremost expert on primitive combat," Hammond corrected with a reprimanding glare.

"Primitive?"

"Sticks and stones were his exact word," Hammond answered with an unbendingly straight face.

Xander stared into the general's unwavering eyes for a moment. Then it was his turn to sigh. "Is whatever we're getting even worth the risk?"

"Haven't any idea," Hammond answered frankly. Catching Xander's visibly flagging motivation, he quickly added, "But the Tok'ra were very motivated to make this deal. They know something about this that they aren't telling us. This data is worth something. If not to us, then in trade."

Xander frowned. He still wasn't convinced. Mostly because the situation was starting to sound complicated. Xander didn't do complicated as a rule. Sure, the rituals needed to slay a demon may seem complicated to the outside observer, but they were straight forward when you got used to it. Like baking a cake, but with complicated ingredients and blood way too much of the time… a blood cake.

As Xander considered the less fun parts of interplanetary relations, he asked, "Can we know he isn't going to turn us over to the Goa'uld. Can we trust him hating the bad guys? More than he hates us or loves money or whatever."

"From what I've heard, that's unlikely. Supposedly he once dropped a plate, and as punishment, they tortured him for a thousand years."

"That… doesn't sound like the type of thing you get over."

"No," Hammond declared, pursing his lips at the thought. "It does not."

"So, my job is to pretend to be a pack mule while acting as the lone bodyguard for three scientists against a horde of aliens."

"My hope is that it doesn't come to that."

Xander narrowed his eye at that political answer. Then he turned to the door leading out of the briefing room. "So, why the secrecy on this? Wouldn't it be easier to protect them if they knew to follow my orders when things went down?"

Hammond looked to the ceiling as he collected his thoughts. Then he carefully answered, "Those gentlemen are great at their jobs… and their jobs do not involve handling classified information."

"Other than the fact that you have a space door in your basement."

"Any more than they need to know."

Xander nodded at that. He didn't know what other answer he expected to hear.

As Xander contemplated the potential mess he'd gotten himself in, Hammond gave him a sympathetic look. Then he said, "Everything should be fine as long as you don't do anything to excite him. If you've worked with Captain Finn, you must have some experience in these matters."

"In espionage?" Xander asked, closing his eye and drudging through the minor ruses he'd used to fight various demons. "Not really, but I've seen all the bond films."

"God help me," Hammond whispered to himself as he turned to leave the briefing room.

"Hey!" Xander called after him excitedly. "If I do really well, will a sexy assassin come to seduce me? General?! This is important!"

Around forty minutes after he'd fled his briefing with Jack's new hire, General Hammond was watching the boy and the three scientists step through the gate. As he witnessed the boy pretend to drop a piece of government equipment worth tens of thousands, he sighed. Sometimes it felt like Jack alone accounted for half the paperwork that crossed his desk. Just thinking about how much that'd be increasing with a second Jack around was giving him an ulcer.

After the underwhelming team had disappeared beyond the beautiful, blue flow of the wormhole, Hammond returned to his office. Once he'd arrived, he was greeted by a familiar face. "Doctor," He said with a nod as he moved to sit behind his cluttered desk.

"I just stopped by to deliver my report," the stoic psychologist answered with a half-smile. As he spoke, he purposefully laid a file on top of a stack of paperwork.

"How was it?" Hammond asked, picking up the file and pretending to leaf through it before putting it down again.

"More informative than previous. The kid has some issues. A lot of secrets… maybe some girl troubles?"

"Can you pick him out of a line up? A line up of other hims."

The psychologist shrugged. It was a tough question given all the different types of possession and mind viruses they'd seen over the years. After a few seconds of consideration, however, he gave a devious grin. Then he said, "I did learn one thing."

"What?" Hammond asked after it became clear he wouldn't continue without provocation.

"No matter what's happening, he'll always to take the time to correct me about his name."

Author's note:

I know everyone wants to see Xander and Jack together. It's what you came for. However, I can't bring myself to have Xander join along with SG-1 right out of the gate. It crushes the verisimilitude a bit for me. So, for the next couple chapters I hope you can bear with me. After this mission I should be able to make a justification for SG-1 to team up with a one-eyed carpenter from California.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Stepping out of the dark basement and into the harsh light of day, Xander squinted and tried to catch his breath. His second experience with wormholes was just as beautifully uncomfortable as the first. Jack had said he'd get used to that, but he was doubtful.

It felt like he'd been thrust into a freezing lake… and then been smeared across space and time. As he dwelt on that sensation, he realized he could smell that strange scent that hung around after rainfall. Looking up at the clear blue sky, he got a bit worried. Willow had once told him that smell was ozone, which was like an anti-anti-oxidant. That left him with one uncomfortable question: how much cancer would he be filled with after using wormholes for his daily commute. He had no idea, but it must be more than he'd get from standing too close to the microwave.

After recovering his composure, Xander looked around at his temporary teammates and found that they had not. Seeing them panting with their hands on their knees, Xander decided it'd be a while. He set down the ten-ton bag of equipment strapped to his back and surveyed his surroundings. As he did, he was a bit disappointed.  
He'd heard about other worlds during the past month and he had one point of experience. However, he still held out hope to find something alien. Or course, he didn't. The area around him was a little more arid than you'd imagine southern Canada being. Other than that, however, it fit all the mundane descriptions. It had rocks, and dirt, and grass, and trees. Even the sky didn't have enough self-respect to be another color or have a really big moon. Basically Earth, but not on Earth.

As Xander's eye fell on his team again, the one that wasn't forgettable or balding threw his hands in the air and shouted, "Woooohoooo!" at nothing in particular.  
The unexpected outburst forced all eyes on him. A fact that didn't seem to bother him. He, who was probably Feldman, met the critical gazes and happily declared, "We're on another planet! A real mission!"

"And I'm already regretting it," the balding one (….Comb?) responded bitterly.

"Don't be like that," Feldman responded, throwing an arm around Comb before being grumpily shaken off a second later.

"What's the point of going to an alien world if there are no aliens to meet… not any fun ones, at least." As Comb insisted on being unhappy, he crossed his arms over his chest. As he did, he caught sight of his hands and started complaining again, "It's so dry here, my knuckles have already started to crack. You know how I hate that."

"There's no way that's true," Feldman responded, moving to check his friend's potentially chapped hands.

Losing interest in the squabble, Xander looked back at his surroundings and noticed something he should've caught onto earlier. "Guys…" He tried at first. As he argument continued in the background, he tried again with more conviction, "Guys!"

Seeing that he had the trio's attention, he motioned ahead of them with his chin. They followed his gesture and saw what he did. Nothing. Just an empty, dirt path leading away from where the stargate had spit them out.

"Shouldn't there've been someone here to meet us?" Xander asked the group at large. Hammond might not have said anything explicitly, but that was definitely the implication.

"Maybe they're running late?" Feldman suggested with a shrug. "I've never seen a Goa'uld clock before."

"They have interstellar ships, I'm sure they can tell time," Comb responded with a frown. Then he frowned at the empty dirt path and added, "That doesn't mean they can't be late, though."

"So, I guess we're waiting, then?" Xander asked.

Feldman seemed to consider the notion for a moment. Then he gave an exaggerate nod and declared, "As senior member, and therefore ranking, member of this team, I've decided we'll wait to be picked up."

"Senior member?" Comb asked, raising an eyebrow. "We joined the SGC at the same time."

"But I was the one who got you to sign up. I wanted to join first, so that makes me senior," Feldman rebutted confidently.

"That's not how seniority works!" Comb shouted. After he'd properly retorted, he put his hand on top of his head and turned a longing gaze to a copse of trees to their left. "If we're going to wait, can we wait in the shade?"

Xander could sympathize with that sentiment. He'd never gotten a sunburn on his scalp and hoped he'd never have to. Still, the prospect didn't sound pleasant.

With no more prompting, the team moved under the trees. As they waited, they put down the heavy equipment and stared at nothing in hopes it would become something. After a few seconds of this, Xander noticed some movement to his right. When he looked over, he saw Feldman leaning on a tree beside him. Every few seconds, the man would take a very intense sidelong glance at Xander before turning away.

"What's up?" Xander asked after feeling Feldman's wistful gaze for the fifth time. As he spoke, his voice wavered uncertainly. He wouldn't deny that this situation was uncomfortably new. He'd never been that attractive to gay men… or straight women, for that matter. There was only one demographic he'd ever really had pull with. He just hoped Feldman wouldn't sprout horns any time soon.

In response to Xander's direct question, Feldman's eyes darted around for a few seconds. Then he focused his gaze and slowly asked, "I heard that you went on a mission with Colonel O'Neill… of SG-1. Is that true?"

"I guess you could say it is?" Xander responded. He didn't know if he'd call what they did a mission. More like a jaunt, really. A very dangerous jaunt.

"What was it like?!" Feldman asked excitedly, leaning way too close.

Xander unconsciously pulled back and almost tripped on a root. When he looked back up, he found that he'd gained zero distance from the expectant scientist. "I guess it was like walking through a Canadian forest. Except, instead of everyone being polite, they were all very not polite."

"It must've been amazing," Feldman whistfully sighed out the words as he took a couple steps away from Xander.

"Is that what it sounded like?" Xander asked as he was able to straighten himself up again.

"You know, I've always looked up to them. I mean, since I've joined the program, obviously," Feldman explained, not paying attention to Xander's response. "They save the world. Personally. All the time. They're constantly doing stuff that… I… could never do." As Feldman trailed off, his gaze shifted to stare past Xander, into the distance.

"I'm sure…" On impulse, Xander wanted to reassure the sad, little scientist. Then he decided it'd be better not to lie and he lamely finished, "They really are awesome, aren't they?"

"I know, right!? Can you imagine what it'd be like to hold the fate of the world in your hands!?" Feldman asked excitedly, energy returning to his face as if the previous second were an illusion. "To save that many people. I bet it's exhilarating."

"It's a lot more anti-climactic than you'd think," Xander answered bitterly, thinking back to his many post-non-apocalypse hang overs. It was especially bad when he had work the next day.

"What was that?"

As Xander realized what he'd just said, he quickly amended, "Bet it'd be! I-I bet. Like, just another day at the office… sort of feeling."

Feldman stared into Xander's eye contemplatively for a moment. Then he gave a slight nod and said, "You may be right. That's how they always seem to treat it, anyway. Still…" Then Feldman seemed to realize something and shook his head hastily. "What am I talking about? You were actually with O'Neill. In the field. What was he like!?"

Xander furrowed his brow and stared into Feldman's expectant face as he tried to come up with an answer. "Like that one uncle that everyone's supposed to have. The one that's really chill and sneaks you beers behind your parent's backs. Your chill beer uncle." Xander never had a positive male role model that wasn't librarian. Encountering one at the age of _, he was having trouble putting words to the concept.

"He does seem pretty cool," Feldman responded with a slight nod. Then he leaned in pressed further, "What else?"

Xander's eye swam as he tried to come up with some other words to put to basically the same impression.

Before he had to, however, he was rescued by the lecturing voice of Comb. "Can't you see you're bothering the man, Felger?"

At first, Xander let out a sigh of relief at the assistance. Then he caught the second half of the statement and felt a torrent of embarrassment. Not Feldman, Felger. Even if he hadn't said it out loud, getting it wrong was uncomfortable. Still, it was an honest mistake. Could happen to anyone.

"I'm not bothering anyone, Coombs," Felger responded irritably.

…Coombs. Not Comb. That made sense. No one is named Comb. Xander was batting 0 for 2 here. As Coombs and Felger devolved into another argument, Xander turned to look at their third, silent, companion. His name was… mayo… Xander decided that he could pay a bit more attention to people from now on.

As Felger and Coombs continued their argument, Xander stared into the distance and waited. After thirty minutes of nothing happening, Coombs and Felger had fallen silent and Xander finally gave up on waiting.

"I don't think anyone is coming," Xander observed, uncrossing his arms from his chest.

"They could be running really late," Felger responded weakly.

"So, what's the S.O.P. on this, then?" Xander asked, furrowing his brow. "How long is long enough?"

"This aren't any 'procuedures' for this," Coombs answered irritably. "Waiting for a goa'uld to make contact so we can do IT support isn't an anticipated situation."

"Not goa'uld," Felger corrected seriously. "Tok'ra."

"Whatever," Coombs replied, throwing his hands up.

"It's important! He'll get mad."

Xander privately wondered if he would, but didn't bother correcting Felger. Instead, he moved to get them back on track. "If there're no procedures, that means we can do what we want. That's how the government works, right?"

"I don't think it is," Coombs observed.

"Whatever," Xander responded easily. "There's no one here to yell at us anyway. So, we have to make a decision. We can either wait here for people that may not even be coming for us, go home, or go looking for something."

In the wake of Xander's words, a heavy silence hung in the air. It felt like a classroom where the teacher had just asked a question. After a while, the enterprising student to break the silence was Felger. "You think they may be waiting for us? Like we thought they'd come to us and they thought we'd come to them?"

"I dunno," Xander answered with a shrug. "He's a snake thing, right? Would he do that?"

"I dunno," Felger replied.

"Good."

"Maybe we should take a look around," Felger said as he seemed to gain some confidence.

"No," Coombs rejected outright. "This is weird and that means dangerous. We should wait for another hour and go home if no one shows."

"Do you really want to leave without doing anything?" Felger asked accusingly.

"I don't want us to get ourselves killed," Coombs answered stubbornly.

"We can't just abandon the mission," Felger complained.

Xander thought back to his time as a pizza deliveryman. He wondered how his boss would've responded if he came back from a job saying, "I drove there and their lights weren't on, so I didn't get out of the car and drove back." He couldn't imagine the U.S. government would have lower standards than Mr. Salvador. At least, he hoped it didn't.

"He's right. We should at least try and find out what's going on," Xander chimed in.

"Yes!" Felger responded, clenching his fist. "We'll go out exploring and get to the bottom of this! Just like a real mission."

Xander tried to ignore the last words, which were clearly meant to go unheard, and said, "We're off to explore an alien planet, then." He felt like simply saying those words should've got him excited. However, his surroundings dampened all that. It felt more like he was on a field trip to America's most boring national park than any space adventure.

"No. We are not." Coomb's voice cut in to murder whatever dregs of excitement remained. "We are not an SG team. We're scientists… and one luggage carrier. We aren't trained or equipped for exploring anything."

"Come on, Coombs," Felger emplored emotionally. "Don't you feel anything here? I thought you'd love this kind of opportunity. Just like in one of your Sci-Fi shows."

"Yeah, well, I don't have plot armor," Coombs complained, crossing his arms. "I don't want to die."

"You aren't going to," Felger attempted some persuasion. "The only people on this planet are our allies and we have their invitation to be here. The worst that could happen is that they get a little mad because we aren't where they expected."

"Famous last words," Xander barely kept himself from saying.

"…fine," Coombs finally gave a begrudging answer after about a minute of thought.

Like that, the four set out on their grand expedition. Not that there was much expeditioning to be done. There was only on dirt path leading away from the gate. Going in any other direction would've been hopelessly stupid. Still, it didn't feel like exploration if you were following a dirt road.

After about ten minutes of lugging the heavy equipment down the road, Xander's expectations were paid off somewhat. Once they passed over a small hill, a large, sprawling palace came into view. That was the kind of sight that could get your blood pumping. Like discovering an unexplored ruin in the wilderness. Except that someone lived in it… so it was definitely completely explored.

Whatever Xander's mixed feelings on the matter, the place was a landmark. It wide and sprawling, but had only one or two floors to it. It reminded him a lot of a picture he'd seen of the forbidden city in China. Except this palace was smaller and seemed to be made of a similar material to the other Goa'uld technology he'd seen. All metallic black with fancy scratches all along the surface.

"Most of the Goa'uld architecture I've seen is more Egyptian," Felger observed.

"Seen pictures of," Coombs corrected from beside him.

"Seen in pictures," Felger tried to make it sound better. Then he gave up and continued, "Most of it's Egyptian, but that's not a strict rule. I think that's our place."

"The road leads to it," Xander observed with a shrug.

"I have no doubt that's where the goa'uld lives," Coombs responded. "My only question is if he'll be happy to find us here."

"Tok'ra," Felger corrected. "And I see no reason why he wouldn't. He asked for our services. We're just making a delivery."

"We'll make no progress waiting around," Xander declared before taking his first step down the hill.

Felger immediately moved to catch up and a few seconds later, the more timid scientists followed.

Xander privately questioned whether he was making the right call. Unofficially these scientists were put under his care. They were his responsibility. He had no idea what kind of dangers he might be leading them into. At the same time, he felt like he was supposed to ensure they completed the mission.

Safety, duty, team, mission. It was all so complicated and gave him this uncomfortable itchy feeling. He wondered if this was what it felt like to be in charge. If it was, he hated it. If Jack felt like this all the time, Xander had no idea how he could keep joking around so easily. Xander did it all the time, but he wasn't responsible for anything. Only himself. Nothing important.

Ignoring his thoughts, his body moved down the hill. Maybe it's more appropriate to say stumbled. The heavy weight on his back bore down on him, making every step a little longer than it was supposed to be. By the time he reached the bottom, he was in a full jog just to keep from toppling over.

Once he'd managed to stop himself, Xander looked back at his comrades. They weren't doing the best. Mayo and Felger were able to stay on their feet, one way or another. Behind them, Coombs was progressing more on his ass than his legs.

Once Xander was sure they'd made it down without breaking anything important, like their necks, he turned back to their destination. Now that he was closer, the pomp and circumstance of the palace was even more impressive. However, it also revealed itself to be less maintained than it'd looked from afar. He could make out some cracks running along the walls and the gates before them weren't as stalwart as he'd assumed. The left side of the double doors seemed to barely hang from its hinges.

This definitely wasn't what he'd been imagining, but he couldn't definitively say things were hinky. Maybe this was normal for the Goa'uld. Xander had driven over his share of unfilled potholes and never thought twice about it. Besides, it wasn't like fortifications meant much when you had space ships.

Accepting his own justifications, Xander approached the gate. Then he stopped. He wasn't sure what the protocol was for this situation. After a few seconds of thought, he knocked. As he could've expected, there was no answer.

"Do we just go in?" Fleger asked, his voice tinged with both excitement and apprehension.

"We've found their base. If they want us here, they'll let us know," Coombs declared resolutely.

"Couldn't hurt taking a peek," Xander said.

Ignoring Coombs's continued protests, Xander slid off his backpack and gently pressed against the gate. With only that, it soundlessly slid open about a foot. Then Xander poked his head through and took a look around.

On the other side of the wall was an open courtyard that stretched around the palace proper. It was carpeted in grass and had a dozen trees dotted around. Based on their location and shape, Xander assumed they were a fancy blooming type, but they weren't in season and looked as unimpressive as any tree.

After confirming that there was nothing around, he pulled his head back. Then he said, "Nothing's there. Just a boring garden."

"If we still haven't found anyone, I think we should go inside," Felger declared, gaining confidence

"We absolutely shouldn't," Coombs rebutted immediately. "We've come this far. That's enough."

"We can't just leave now," Felger shot back. "If we don't at least try to finish the mission, we'll never get to go into the field again."

"Great. We weren't made for the field."

"Haven't you ever wanted to be something more than you are?"

Seeing Felger's emotional plea, Coombs was taken aback.

Xander moved quickly to capitalize on that, "We should proceed with caution. If we find anything dangerous, we can just drop everything and run."

"You think I can out run a jaffa?" Coombs asked venomously. Then he turned to look behind them and added, "Uphill."

"They negotiated for days to get us here," Felger declared firmly. "You think they'd go through that just to kill three nameless scientists and a baggage carrier?"

"You don't know they wouldn't," Coombs muttered a complaint under his breath, but it was the muttering of a loser. He'd given up his resistance.

With that decided, the inexperienced team moved through the gates and into the courtyard. It didn't take long to reach the palace's front door. At least, it didn't take long to reach the palace's doorway. To reach the door itself would've taken an eternity, since it didn't exist.

Once again, Xander was given pause by this sight. Such an ornate building having no door at all was hardly normal. However, he could only give up or continue. It only took him a few seconds to choose the latter. If they really ran into something here, Xander was confident he could distract it for long enough for the scientists to get away. He was good at being distracting.

After they moved into the palace proper, the team was greeted by what was surely once an ornate entryway. Now, the walls were lined with smashed columns and the floor was littered with fragments of what might've been furniture.

Seeing this devastated landscape, Xander naturally took a step back and found himself outside again.

Felger, on the other hand, took a few steps further into the room. Then he nodded as if he'd figured something out. "Hammond said they excavated the thing they wanted us to look at, right? You think this isn't their base, but the excavation site?"

Xander considered that. Most of his archeological knowledge came from Indiana Jones. Based on that, this place had way too few vines to be a proper ruin. At the same time, this didn't really strike Xander as a vine climate, so it all checked out.

Xander gave his theory a nod and a shrug. Then he stepped back into the palace and took the lead again. For no particular reason, he followed the right wall and went into the first door he saw.

Through there, he found a long hallway. The walls, floor, and ceiling all seemed to be made out of the same material as the exterior of the palace. It gave the feeling that the whole place had been carved from one piece. It was interesting.

Along the ceiling of the hallway ran two parallel lines that seemed to hold some kind of light source. It was white and bright enough to illuminate the entire hall. That was all Xander could tell. Behind him, he heard the scientists whispering to each other. When he heard them saying words that ended in '-ite' and '-ine,' he gave up and stopped paying attention.

Other than that, the most defining feature of the palace interior was the smell. It almost reminded Xander of chlorine, but lacked the chemical harshness. It was kind of refreshing, but he got the feeling he'd get a headache if he stayed here for too long.

When Xander looked around for the source of the smell, he found a small channel of water which ran along the left wall of the hallway. It was a strange find. For a moment he'd thought about bending down to run his fingers through it. Then he remembered the many acid and poison spitting demons. So much of that looked like harmless water. It really put a damper on his impulse to check out clear mystery liquids.

After satisfying himself with the features of the hallway, Xander started to move down it. The three scientists followed behind. As he moved, he tried to crush the exhilaration he felt at exploring an actual alien ruin. He was working right now and his job was to keep three people alive. He couldn't afford to get distracted… Though, Willow and Andrew were going to get completely jealous when he told them about this. At least they would, if telling them wasn't illegal.

Shaking off those thoughts, Xander moved down the hall, which eventually bent left. Eventually, he found another door on the right wall and took it. Then he found himself in another hallway. Things continued like that for a while. Occasionally he'd look into some small rooms that either had barracks style cots or technology he didn't understand. They didn't spend too long investigating anything specific. Their main goal was to find anyone. Whether they were hostile or not, that would at least tell them they were in the right place.

After about ten minutes of fruitless walking, Xander found himself in another small room full of alien doodads. Previously he would've found that idea exciting, but he'd learned the error of his ways. When a computer is in a language you don't read, there's not much you can do with it.

After poking around to make sure no one was hiding under the furniture, Xander prepared to leave. That was when he was stopped by Felger's voice. "Wait."

"What is it?" Xander asked, turning back around.

"This looks weird," Felger answered slowly, splitting his attention between Xander and a strange device sitting in the center of the room.

"Everything looks weird. We're in an alien's house. Or ex-house. Either way, weirdness," Xander responded.

"No, this is different," Coombs joined in, taking a place beside Felger to examine the device. "Doesn't look Goa'uld. Not normal Goa'uld, at least."

"Do you think this is what we came to look at? Or is it another one of them?" Felger asked, seemingly himself. "They said it looked different."

Xander took a better look at the device. Sitting in the center of several computer-ish looking consoles, it was definitely the feature of the room. It was elliptical; about as long as his chest was wide and half as thick. "Looks like a big black bullet," Xander observed. "Don't see how what's so special about that. They make plenty of black things."

"No, this is completely different," Felger corrected, his tone filled with anticipation towards the problem in front of him. "All Goa'uld data and programming is stored in modular data crystals that can be transferred between any large device. This defies that system entirely. I can't even see any seems."

"So maybe it's not a computer," Xander responded. "It looks like a bullet. Maybe it is one."

"Look at those cables," Coombs said, pointing at the thick wiring that coiled around the floor. "It's all connected to that device. At least, it looks like it's supposed to be. Someone thought it would interface. Though it doesn't look like they figured out how."

Barely paying attention to the technical stuff, Xander took a few steps around the mysterious bullet to get a better look.

"Oh, there's a little hole here," Xander observed, crouching near the front of the bullet. "Something inside. Looks like a rod. Like an Egyptian space dildo."

"That's not what it is, don't touch it," Felger ordered, jumping between Xander's questing hand and the bullet.

Xander dejectedly retracted his hand and took a few steps back. "So, what are we doing now?"

"We have to investigate this," Felger declared firmly.

"If this really is the device, then we have to. It's our mission," Coombs back up from beside him.

"And if it isn't?" Xander asked, raising his eyebrow.

"It's the closest thing to it we've found," Felger responded defiantly. "Plus…"

"I want to see what it is," Mayo finally spoke up from the back of the group.

The other two scientists readily nodded at the man's words.

The odd man out, Xander put down his backpack next to the scientists and moved to lean against the nearest wall. As the scientists did their thing, Xander stared into space and thought idly about Marvin the Martian. He was a fun alien. Like a space gladiator with Aspergers.

Xander always loved science fiction. In retrospect, though, it was pretty rough on people who got straight 'D's in science class.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Xander had no idea how long it'd been since they'd entered this room, but it felt like forever. Other than lugging around a few of the computer parts, Xander had been relegated to the corner alone. While the scientists did sciencey things, he sat in solitary silence. If he had his phone, he could play Tetris, or at least flip it open and closed for that satisfying click. There was no hope of that, though. He'd left his phone back at the base. He'd thought he wouldn't need it on his space adventure. How naïve he was.

"How's it coming?" Xander leaned forward to ask once again.

As he should've expected by now, he received no answer. Stepping backwards to lean against the wall, Xander contemplated leaving. Going to explore. He really wanted to. Honestly, he would probably get about as much from exploring this place as he would form listening to the scientists, but at least he'd be moving. Of course, he quickly gave up that thought. He needed to stay and protect the trio. He had a duty and all that.

…but then again, reconnaissance was a military thing. They did it all the time. In fact, you could say Xander had a responsibility to go out there and identify any threats. How was he supposed to protect anyone if he didn't know from what he was protecting them?

Xander nodded in agreement with himself. Then he took a step forward and declared, "I'm going to check our perimeter." He didn't know if that was entirely applicable in this situation, but it sounded really official.

Of course, he received no response. The scientists continued muttering to each other and fidgeting with cables.

Xander took another few steps forward until he was standing directly behind Felger. Then he shouted, "I'm going to take a look around!" When he'd gained the scientists' attention, he lowered his voice and explained, "I think it'd be better if we found our hosts before they found us." Less official sounding, but still a fine excuse. Not excuse, justification. Reasoning.

The scientists stared at him wordlessly for a moment. Then Coombs said, "That's fine, just don't step on anything."

Xander frowned before turning towards the door. He really wondered how useless they thought he was. Probably mostly useless, now that the luggage was delivered. He mulled over that thought as he exited the room.

Once back in the hallway, Xander looked around for any identifying factors he could use when looking for this place. He found none. After a second's thought, he retrieved one of his knives from inside his clothes and carefully struck its handle against the wall. That left no mark. Then looked at the blade and considered trying to carve a symbol on the wall. However, that would absolutely dull the knife's edge. Then he remembered what would be dulling the knife's edge might be a priceless historical landmark and he gave up. If anything terrible happened, he could rely on the time honored tradition of shout-based navigation, anyway.

With that comforting thought, Xander moved further down the hallway. As he did, he continued his system from before, hugging the right wall. That gave him at least some hope of making his way back properly.

Lord knows he'd need all the help he could get. He was tempted to call the place maze-like, but that wasn't quite right. It wasn't as much a maze as that the whole palace's design didn't make sense to him. Then again, he didn't know the purpose of most rooms he found. Who was he to talk about efficiency of floor plan?

The only thing that really stood out about the place so far was that he'd yet to find a toilet. That bothered him. He'd heard that the foot soldiers don't have intestines because of Goa'uld magic or whatever, but still… _Everybody Poops_. They wrote a whole book about that, so it's gotta be true.

As Xander was contemplating the intricate complexities of Gao'uld bowel magic, his toe caught on something and he almost fell on his face. Catching himself on his left foot, Xander regained his balance and spun around to check what got him. Behind him, he found a door he'd missed while caught in thought. Lying halfway out of it, there was a man dressed in something that looked like armor.

Hurriedly, Xander crouched down, saying, "I'm so sorry, are you- d-dead. You're dead, aren't you?" Before he could touch the man, he remembered that laying in doorways isn't common practice. Even for aliens. It wouldn't be practical.

With a resigned hand, Xander grabbed the man's shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. When the man's blankly staring face came into view, the shred of hope Xander had for narcolepsy vanished. In an instant, his blood ran cold and he was prepared to leap up and run back to the trio. Before he could, however, another thought struck him. It'd be good to know what was going on.

Xander looked down at the dead man. He had a tattoo of what looked like a fish or really weird crocodile on his forehead and was wearing strange, grey armor. Overall, his entire body was strange, but not dead strange. There were no obvious wounds. No three foot diameter laser blast scars.

For a moment, Xander's stomach turned over as he thought about the possibility of some kind of alien disease. You show no symptoms and just drop dead. Xander quickly removed his hands and wiped them on his pants.

That was when something else caught his eye. The man's feet were weird. They looked backwards. Hesitantly, he reached out to turn the corpse over again. Then his feet seemed to be facing up, but his actual face was pressed into the floor.

Xander spent an embarrassing amount of time confused by that. When he understood what had happened, he closed his eyes and shook his head. He didn't know why he couldn't think about it. Maybe breaking a person's neck seemed too primitive to happen when you could shoot laser blasts.

With his autopsy done, Xander quickly jumped up and started running back down the hallway. An unknown someone was turning people's heads around 180 degrees. That seemed like enough justification to end a scientific mission.

Not stopping to look through rooms, Xander took only a minute to make it back to where the scientists should have been. The only problem was, they weren't there. He was certain he was in the right place, but he couldn't find the room. He desperately swung his head back and forth looking for some sort of sign. Then he noticed that the section of wall where the room was had a different hue to its surroundings. Feeling along that area, he found the slightest depression outlining what had to be a door.

Without any thought, Xander immediately slammed his fist against the damned sci-fi door. A choice he immediately regretted as his hand exploded in pain. If he really was a cartoon, then it'd be dark red a pulsing. In real life, he was sure he'd have a nasty bruise after this.

He didn't have time to think about that now, though. After shaking some life back into his hand, Xander took a step back and charged the door with his shoulder. That was the ultimate solution he'd seen in all the movies, so it had to have some merit.

It didn't. With both his right fist and left shoulder screaming at him, Xander lightly knocked against the door with his left palm. "Hey! Are you guys in there!?"

After he called out, he waited for about thirty seconds, but he didn't hear a response. Then he tried again, "Science sucks, or whatever! Hey Coombs, Picard is...! Some things just can't be said."

Xander took a step back. Then he remembered the small radio strapped to his waist. He quickly drew it and tried shouting into it a few times, but got only static in return. It didn't seem like it was even working. He almost cursed at the thing. Just because he was in the middle of a metal box, doesn't mean his radio needed to crap out. It was so unmotivated.

When it was clear he'd receive nothing from his comrades, he feared for the worst. Whatever was in this place had gotten to them. He hadn't known the men for long, but the thought of the hapless nerds lying in there with broken necks filled him with frustration and despair. Impotent rage

Xander tried to shake away those feelings and think of the hopeful possibilities. Just because it was silent, didn't mean they were dead. The door and walls were thick. They could be shouting and he wouldn't know. Maybe they'd accidentally triggered something that locked the door on them. They were pretty good at that stuff, maybe they something dangerous and locked themselves in on purpose.

After talking himself down, Xander looked around the door frame for something. A button or a panel. They were always there in the TV shows, but as much as he groped the smooth metallic surface, he found nothing.

Finding that he'd wasted five minutes and made no progress, he gave up on that and turned his thoughts to other solutions. There had to be something to open the door from the outside. There had to be some button with a symbol of a door on it he could press. Or maybe whoever really owned this place had a key fob. Something. There was always something. That's how doors worked. Now, he just had to find it.

With that thought, Xander took off down the hallway. At first, almost instinctually, Xander headed away from where he found the dead man. Then, after some thought, he turned around. If there was anything to find, generally it lay in the direction of the most danger. That was a principle Xander had followed for most of his life, and look where it'd got him. Alone in an unknown ruin filled with monsters. Potentially filled with monsters. Allegedly.

After passing the corpse, Xander entered unknown territory. This left him hesitant for a second. He tried to come up with some kind of plan. He wanted to find a list of signs there might be a special door opener nearby, but he couldn't come up with anything. Left without a plan, he let urgency spur him forward.

He jogged down hallways blindly, taking doors almost at random. As he did, he searched for anything that might look, or sound, or smell like a key, but this was fruitless. After five minutes of this, just as rationality was starting to overtake his worry, he heard something. Like an explosion, but really far away. Really muffled.

He could clearly make out that the sound came from his left. That gave him a complicated decision. Run towards the scary boom boom thing or away. He had no guarantee that he would find something by facing whatever it was… but he had his principles. Xander immediately took the first left he saw. And found himself in what looked like a broom closet. A little embarrassed, he stepped back and tried again.

It took Xander about four minutes of running, with increasingly loud blasts to guide his way, and then he found it. Probably. When he entered the large, grandiose room dominated by a large throne and several broad pillars, there weren't any explosions for him to see. However, the floor did have several dents in it. The network of strange water channels which covered the floor was half ruined, with the clear substance flowing into pools in half a dozen newly made craters.

In the center of this mess, Xander found a demon he'd never seen before. No. Not a demon. An alien? An alien Bigfoot orangutan? He couldn't find a description that'd satisfy him. Not that that was the pressing issue here. More importantly, orangutan Bigfoot was holding up someone by what looked to be the face. It's massive, leathery hands easily clutched the man's skull, palming him like a basketball.

The human man was probably tall and maybe handsome. However, his body looked miniscule next to the towering monster and his excessively pale skin was painted in red and purple from blood and bruising. As he hung three feet off the floor, Xander was sure he was dead.

He was proven wrong, however. A few seconds after he entered the room, both man and beast sensed his presence and turned to stare at him. Less than a second later, the man seemed to decide this was an opportunity. He reached up with both hands and grabbed the beast's wrist. Then the flesh on the back of his neck ripped open and a small, spikey serpent fell out of him. The snake hit the floor and bounced once before landing in one of the small water channels.

The beast noticed the snake's movement and immediately threw the corpse of the man to the side. Then it drew up its massive fist and brought it down onto the ground. With another huge boom, a crater was formed in the floor and water was thrown everywhere. Before it could be struck by the attack, however, the serpent disappeared into a dark hole and was gone.

As the bigfoot stared after the vanished serpent, Xander considered his options. This process took about five seconds before he came to a conclusion: this wasn't his business. He didn't want to intrude. Slowly, carefully, he tried to edge backwards.

As soon as he'd taken the first step, however, the ape monster shouted, "Stop!" Its voice was deep and guttural, but had some strange fluctuations to it. Like several lighter, more refined voices were speaking alongside the beast.

Instantly, upon hearing that one word, Xander froze in place. It was like his body was commandeered for a second. He hadn't been scared like this for a long time. He'd had a long time to get used to monsters. He wondered what was different now. Was it the alien thing? Was he worried about being probed?

While Xander tried to figure himself out, the bigfoot slowly raised its head and stared at Xander with cold, golden eyes. "Human," It declared condescendingly. Then it looked Xander up and down before adding, "Tau'ri."

"We prefer Earthling Amercians," Xander responded automatically.

"I don't care," Alien Bigfoot rejected coldly. Stretching to its full height, it turned its whole body to face Xander. Then it asked, "What are you doing here, Tau'ri?"

"I'm a little lost is all," Xander answered, his eyes scanning around for something that resembled an advantage. Then he remembered his idol and added, "I think I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque"

"You did not," Alien Bigfoot rejected again, taking a step forward toward Xander. Then its eyes flashed a strange, white light and it asked, "Are you working with that sandy fish?"

"Absolutely not. I have a policy against trusting anything cold blooded. There was this one time with a lizard man…" When Xander processed Bigfoot's full statement, he trailed off and asked, "Did you say sand fish? Like a land shark? Do those exist?! Can I actually meet a street shark?"

"Where is my legacy?" Alien Bigfoot demanded, cutting through Xander's excited questioning.

Xander was immediately taken aback by that unexpected request. "Legacy? Like the pyramids? Or prison reform?"

"Where has he hidden it? Tell me and-" Alien Bigfoot trailed off in the middle of his sentence and stared into space thoughtfully.

"And what?" Xander asked, wrinkling his brow.

Alien Bigfoot continued to think for a few seconds, letting out a low growl or groan. Something in the 'g' family of expulsions. Then it slowly answered, "Tell me where my legacy is and I will likely not kill you."

"Likely?" Xander asked, only getting more confused. "In my experience, people are more definite with their threats."

"To lie outside battle is the work of a coward. I am not a coward," Bigfoot declared proudly. "If you were to offend my honor, I would have no choice, but to kill you."

"I see…" Xander responding, letting out a cramped smile. "So it's all about saying the right things… I'm so good at that…"

As Xander considered whether it'd be easiest to just start the fight now, Alien Bigfoot said, "Start by telling me where my legacy is."

"And if I said I didn't know?"

"I do not appreciate lies."

"And if I wasn't lying?"

In response to Xander's question, Alien Bigfoot merely stared at him with its stern, monkey face.

Xander considered his options and only found one. Not a great one. Usually he'd research everything he could about a demon before he'd go to kill it. If he didn't, he wouldn't know that they could only be wounded by the essence of parsley or whatever. Flying blind was impossible.

Then a thought struck him. Presumably, this guy wasn't a demon. It was an alien. Jack had been shocked when he saw a vampire take a bullet no problem. That meant aliens should be normal-ish. The cut them and they bleed type. If that was true, there was no problem.

After Xander had properly psyched himself up, he slowly stretched his arms and placed them on the back of his head as he spoke, "I never got around to asking, but was that other guy the owner of this place?"

As the Bigfoot reflexively looked to the body Xander had nodded towards, Xander slipped his hand through his shirt collar. Then, in one fluid motion, he drew the knife he had hidden there and threw it at Bigfoot. He would hit it in the eye and then circle around while it was confused. Go for the throat.

Before Xander could even finalize his plan, it was dashed. Faster than Xander's eyes could make sense of, Bigfoot's wide, dark palm moved to cover its face. When the short knife sunk into its flesh, Bigfoot only released a small sigh. Then it reached out to remove the knife from the thick leather of its hand. The knife was easily pulled out, followed by a faint trickle of blood which Bigfoot quickly licked up.

Once he was finished, Bigfoot turned its golden eyes back on Xander and declared, "Of course, now I will have to kill you."

"Don't you need me?" Xander asked hopefully, as cold sweat broke out all over his body. "To find your… whatever?"

"If I cannot find my legacy before the fish finds a new host, I will simply destroy this whole facility before he can move it," Bigfoot answered with cool nonchalance. "It shouldn't be difficult to find in the rubble."

"I see..." Xander responded, backing away slowly. "It's good to have a backup plan."

"It is."

With that final agreement, Alien Bigfoot started to move. In spite of its huge body, it was deceptively fast. Before Xander could take two steps away, Bigfoot had already reached him and started to punch down at him.

Completely on reflex, Xander jumped to the side. Barely avoiding being reduced into paste, Xander turned his unorganized jump into a roll. Then a massive boom filled the room as fist hit floor and threatened to steal Xander's consciousness. Thankfully, Xander had some experience with demon roars and had learned to keep a wall between his ears and his brain.

Xander recovered his feet in time to stumble leftward in hopes of avoiding another blow. He could feel a thin streak of his hairline being worn away as the meteoric punch grazed him. However, he survived and managed to duck behind one of the large pillars. Gaining a sturdy barrier between him and the monster, Xander felt relieved, but he didn't stop running.

This proved to be a wise decision. Seconds later, the pillar gave a shudder and then exploded into pieces as Bigfoot crashed through it. Xander barely paid that ridiculous sight any attention as he ran forward blindly. He had no plan. He merely tried to keep as much of anything between him and the Bigfoot as possible as he thought.

All Xander had on him were knives. Knives seemed uniquely useless here. Bigfoot's skin was too thick. There was always the obvious weakness of the eyes, but he immediately ruled that out. Getting close in this situation didn't sound wise. His best bet was to run in a circle and try to leave into the hallway. Smaller areas are better against big enemies.

With something of a plan, Xander looked back at Bigfoot. It barely slowed down as it charged through two more pillars. "What are you going to do if the room collapses on top of you?!" He shouted back irritably.

"Don't worry, these aren't structural," Bigfoot answered calmly, picking up a broken piece of pillar to hurl at Xander.

Xander quickly jumped to the side to avoid the debris. After the thunderous crash of its impact, Xander looked over at the him sized dent it left. Then he shouted, "The wall is!"

Bigfoot merely gave a simian smile in response.

Then a familiar sound of static caught Xander's attention. In a half a second, he was reminded of the science trio. The whole reason he was in this room in the first place. Were they still alive? Were they finally trying to contact him?

Xander was only distracted for a second, but it was a fatal second. By the time he noticed, Bigfoot had already scooped him up in one massive hand. As the thick fingers tightened around his abdomen, Xanders chest flooded with searing pain. Listening to his bones give off a forlorn creak, Xander could only groan along with them.

If he was going to die, he wanted to say at least one monkey joke, but his lungs weren't working properly. The pressure kept increasing. With it, the pain increased and his vision started to narrow down.

In his last moments, Xander looked up and saw Bigfoot opening its mouth to say something. With no thought at all, Xander reached and shoved both his hands inside Bigfoot's mouth. Inside the wet, slimy burrow, Xander's fingers close on Bigfoot's tongue. Just as Bigfoot was about to bite down on Xander's forearms, Xander pulled back his hands with all his might.

When Bigfoot's sharp fangs came down, they closed on his own tongue, immediately biting it off. As blood started to erupt from Bigfoot's mouth, Xander looked at his hands. At the unpleasant bolt of flesh he held. As much out of disgust as strategy, Xander quickly threw the tongue into Bigfoot's face.

Whether from the pain, or the blood loss, or the shock of being slapped in the eye with his own tongue, Bigfoot's grip loosened. Xander didn't miss that opportunity. He quickly slipped out of Bigfoot's grasp and started hobbling towards the door. Within seconds, he was able to regain himself and move up to a jog.

After exiting into the hallway, Xander took stock of his situation. He was out at least. He was certain he had at least one broken bone, but he'd dealt with worse. For now, the focus was the trio. He pulled his radio from his waist and pressed the button. "Hello!? Are you there!? What's going on!?"

Before any answer could come, Xander heard a furious roar and a series of crashes ring out behind him. He immediately quickened his pace. He wasn't out of the woods yet.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Dr. Jay Felger was frowning at his laptop screen. This assignment was turning out to be one tough nut to crack. Noticing it, he smiled at his own pun. Then he went back to glaring at the frustrating nut.

The jet-black, seed looking thing was completely seamless and had no ports. It only had a small hole at the tip with a rod inside. The rod itself had a few buttons and what looked like an adjustable selector, but nothing happened when they messed with any of it. All they could do was return it to its hole and try a different approach.

For now they were focused on the small metal pedestal that cradled the device. The pedestal was releasing some pulses of electromagnetic radiation at various frequencies. Like the designer hoped to do what Felger was trying to do, but was just as lost as he was.

The pedestal had been useless for interfacing as of yet, but he felt like the principle was right. That gave him something to work on. He had some experience with these kinds of wireless devices. Some of the Asgard tech he'd seen was like that. They even used true wireless charging. Though, they made use of exotic particles humans didn't even know how to generate, let alone stabilize. Thankfully, the black nut didn't seem as advanced as that.

Still, it was giving them problems. After the next set of frequencies reflected off the casing, Felger stood up. "I'm going for a walk!" He declared irritably.

"We can't do that," Coombs rebutted, looking up at Felger disapprovingly. "It might be dangerous outside."

"I'm not going far. Just up and down the hallway," Felger responded, waving off Coombs's concern. "I just want to clear my head."

Coombs grumbled behind him, but said nothing audible as Felger turned to head out the door.

Then, Felger stopped. The door was gone. No, more accurately, the door appeared and then closed itself. After a little thought, Felger approached the metal obstruction and placed his hand against it. It was cold and solid and unmoving. He tried rubbing the smooth surface a bit and nothing happened. He looked for a button or a sensor nearby, but he couldn't find any.

"Guys…" Felger called out hesitantly when he understood they were locked in.

"I'm not escorting you for your walk," Coombs responded without looking up. After a few seconds, he added, "Meyers isn't either."

"He doesn't get a say in that?" Felger asked, then he shook his head and said, "No. That's not it. The door's closed."

"What're you talking about? There isn't even a door at all," Coombs dismissed, still focused on the equations on his screen.

"Well, there is one now! And it's shut on us!"

Finally, Coombs looked up from his work. He stared for a second, then he shouted, "There's a door!"

"Yes!" Felger agreed exasperatedly.

"Why is it shut?!"

"I don't know!"

"Can we stop shouting," Meyers asked hopefully.

"Y-!" Felger almost shouted his response, but caught himself with a cough at the last minute. "Yeah. Though, I think we should focus on this for now. The cache can wait."

"Of course!" Coombs shouted. Catching Meyer's accusing gaze, he lowered his voice, but not his urgency as he continued. "Why did it close? Did the jaffa find us? Are they keeping us here so we don't run away? Waiting outside with a dozen armed soldiers?"

Felger tried to ignore Coombs as he considered the situation. They were trapped in a room. They had no idea what was happening outside the door or in the rest of the base, though it was probably something, since they were trapped. He had no idea what the right call was here, so he asked himself: what would SG-1 do?

"First, they'd open the door," Felger definitively declared to himself.

"Who would? The jaffa?" Coombs asked quickly.

"What? No," Felger started to answer honestly, then he shook his head, "it doesn't answer. We need to open the door. We can't figure out anything until we know what's going on out there."

"What if there really is a squad of guards waiting outside?" Coombs asked nervously.

"Then they'd open the door on us anyway, right?"

"Not if they're preparing for something or… something," Coombs's lack of tactical experience showed itself as he slowly deflated into himself.

"And if they are?"

"Then we need to come up with a counter-measure first. Then open the door."

"Like, we all pick up something heavy to hit them with?" Felger asked, surveying their surroundings. He'd always been the optimist of the group and he was the most excited about going into the field, but he wasn't an idiot. They had no weapons and spent more time lifting pens than dumbbells. If worst came to worst, their best bet was to get captured and look for a chance to escape.

"Maybe they're planning to pump the room full of poison gas. Knock us out that way," Meyers observed, looking along the walls.

"You think they'd do that?" Coombs asked skeptically.

"Can't see why else they'd seal us in here," Meyers responded with a shrug.

"This isn't Phantom Menace," Felger criticized with a shake of his head. "People don't put special poison gas vents in all their meeting rooms."

"It only takes one," Meyers defended.

"One vent or one person?" Felger asked, confused.

"I can't believe you've watched the terrible prequels, but refuse to learn anything about Star Trek!" Coombs interjected angrily.

"I like Star Wars. It's an exciting adventure," Felger responded. Then, in a quieter voice, he added, "Also, Teal'c likes it."

"I hate you so much sometimes!" Coombs shouted.

"I think we should work on opening the door," Meyers interrupted, causing all three of them to turn towards the dark, metallic barrier.

"Okay!" Felger exclaimed, clapping his hands against his face twice. "Meyers, check if you can get anything useful from the Goa'uld computers around us. Coombs and I will look for a control panel around the door."

Meyers nodded to the pseudo-order and headed back to the computers. Meanwhile, Felger and Coombs cautiously moved to either side of the door. As he approached, Felger couldn't keep himself from thinking about how an army could come storming through at any minute. That feeling died down a bit when he got to work, though. He was always pretty good at that. Focusing took his mind off whatever he wasn't focusing on.

After around five minutes of lovingly caressing the wall's surface, Felger found what he was looking for. The thin panel was almost perfectly flush with the wall and Felger had passed it over several times, but no the fifth, he got it. Once it was found, he brought over a screwdriver from their tools and carefully pried the panel open.

This revealed a small alcove with three glowing crystals inside. One white, one red, one green. Felger and Coombs poured over the crystals for a moment. Then Felger gingerly removed the red and green crystals. Swapping their places, he returned them to the slots in the wall. With an expectant grin, he turned his face towards the door and saw… nothing different.

"You were just guessing, weren't you?" Coombs asked, removing the two crystals again.

"An educated guess," Felger corrected bitterly.

Coombs shook his head as he returned the crystal to their original places. Then a faint hissing sound rang out beside them. Slowly, Felger and Coombs both turned to their right and found an open portal leading to a familiar, empty hallway.

"There's no jaffa," Coombs said, his relief undercut by the suddenness of the revelation.

"I guess resetting it made it resend the previous impulse?" Felger observed bemusedly. "Never seen that before."

"Are you surprised that door programming is less complicated than transportations rings?" Coombs asked, forcing himself to his feet.

"That it's this much less complicated? Yes," Felger responded, following Coombs's lead and heading towards Meyers.

"What do we do now?" Meyers asked hesitantly, standing from his computer and moving to join them.

"We leave," Coombs answered in an instant.

"We can't leave," Felger interrupted, glaring at Coombs. "Xander isn't back yet. We can't leave without him."

"Then call him up on the radio. Get him back here and then we leave. We've done our due diligence. This is enough."

"Some field team we make," Felger grumbled as he pulled his radio from his belt. "First sign of trouble and we run away."

"The second sign would be us dying," Coombs declared resolutely.

Felger frowned and pressed the button on his radio. The device produced some static and nothing else. "Xander. You there?" Felger spoke into the receiver after a few seconds of thought. Privately, he wished he'd reviewed proper radio protocols before the mission. A major oversight.

After half a minute of static-y silence, Felger wondered if he should ask again. Then Coombs took a few steps towards the room's wall and asked, "Do you think this is actually metallic?"

Felger looked away from the radio and frowned. "Then this is useless. I guess we only have one choice."

Coombs nodded.

"Go looking for him."/"Wait here." The two men spoke at once. Then they turned to give each other critical looks.

"If it's really dangerous here, we should find Xander and get out," Felger declared righteously.

"Wandering around blindly won't help anyone," Coombs rebutted firmly. "If you're lost in the woods, you're supposed to wait for people to come for you."

"This isn't the woods. Plus, wouldn't he be the one who's lost?"

"And if he come back while we're wondering around? We have no idea where he could be."

"Is there anything else we can do?" Meyers asked, stepping between Coombs and Felger. "Other than wandering around or waiting?"

Coombs and Felger met each other's eyes. Then looked away and contemplated the walls.

"I'm sure they've had this kind of situation in a Star Trek episode. What did they do?" Felger asked, with nothing else to go on.

"Probably used the walls as an antennae," Coombs answered with a shrug. "It's a good show, but it's not like it's written by scientists."

"I thought that was the whole point of 'Science' fiction," Felger responded softly.

The room fell silent for a few minutes. Then Meyers slowly said, "We might be able to do that. Not actually, but something similar."

"What do you mean?" Coombs asked, furrowing his brow.

"The Goa'uld have a communication system, right?" Meyers explained. "I think I found it when I was looking for the door controls. We can try wiring ourselves into that. Use it to make the radio transmit to any room in the base."

"Can we do that?" Coombs asked skeptically.

"We can try," Felger answered with a smile.

Like that, they set to work. Thankfully they'd brought almost everything they'd owned with them to deal with this mystery cache. Everything portable at least. That gave them plenty of hardware to deal with the issue. It didn't take long to dismantle Coombs's radio and solder it into one of their digital EM sensors. With some minor adjustments they had a crude computer microphone.

The real problem came when the computer was supposed to output sound back to the radio's speaker. What their computer fed their I/O device wasn't precise enough and they could only get noise. At least, that was what they thought at first. When Coombs came up with the idea of shifting all output up 200 Hz uniformly, they started to get something. With a little more refinement everything was set. After they interfaced their computer with the base's, they would have radio access to anywhere… in theory. In practice…

"Try Oldman, wheelchair, wheelchair, star of David," Felger called out, looking over Coombs's shoulder at the computer screen.

"Star of David?" Coombs asked, turning around to give Felger a perplexed look.

"That one," Felger answered, pointing to the screen.

"That's not the star of David," Coombs responded critically.

"If you squint…"

"The star of David has six points!" Coombs rebutted viciously. "That's a quadrilateral with… squiggles or something."

"Whatever, just try it."

"Okay."

After watching the symbols being put in, Felger picked up the modified radio and pressed the button. "Take me to your leader," He spoke into the receiver, taking on the voice of a child playing Martian.

"You don't have to come up with something new every time," Coombs criticized.

"Did you guys do it yet!?" Meyers's voice echoed from down the hallway.

Felger sighed and then raised his voice to respond, "We'll try again!"

"Did you not try one yet?" Meyers's voice echoed back.

"We tried just now! We'll try again… again!"

The problem was the getting the Goa'uld system to transmit on their radio frequency. While the SGC had some good experience translating Goa'uld by now, technical terms were always elusive. Ancient Egyptian had no words for radio or laser and jaffa were generally told their technology worked by the force of Goa'uld will. Their most useful Rosetta Stones for the language gave them nothing and that meant a lot of guess work. A lot.

"Try wheelchair, wheelchair, wheelchair, and the… two bears high-fiving."

Coombs nodded and input the sequence of arcane symbols. Then Felger picked up the radio and pressed the button. "Hello, is it me you're looking for?" He tried to sing, but then remembered how bad he was at it and gave up after the first word. Instead, he merely coughed and repeated, "Hello."

"Hey! I can hear it!" A distorted version of Meyer's voice came out of the radio a few moments later. Then few seconds later, footsteps echoed through the hallway and Meyers ran into the room. "It worked! Could you hear me? I could hear you!"

"I can't believe we got it to work…" Coombs muttered slowly.

Felger couldn't say anything and merely grinned at nothing. This was still firmly inside the realm of science nerd activities, but it also felt field teamish. Encountering a problem and overcoming it with whatever you have at hand. It was exhilarating.

After spending a few seconds basking in that feeling, Felger came back to reality. He closed his mouth and tried to take on a stern, commanding tone as he said, "Now, let's contact Xander."

"Right." Coombs responded, straightening up and pouring over the computer.

Meyers quickly moved beside Felger. They both craned their necks to watch as Coombs spread their broadcast range to the whole base. Once he had, Felger eagerly grabbed the radio, pressed the button, and yanked it in front of his face. Then he heard a loud clattering.

"Dammit, Felger," Coombs complained, picking the I/O box off the floor and moving the plug the USB back into the computer.

"Sorry," Felger apologized, looking to his feet.

"The soldering didn't break, so we can set it up again," Meyers said, waving away Felger's mistake gently.

"Yeah, in like twenty minutes," Coombs complained. It took them four, but in Coombs's defense, it was a long four minutes.

Once the system was all set up again, Felger gingerly picked up the radio and pressed the button, leaning close to the computer so as not to bring the cord taught. "Hello? Xander? Can you hear us?"

"Are you guys okay!?" A distorted voice mixed with both tension and excitement came over the radio a few seconds later.

"We're fine here," Felger answered with a smile, giving his compatriots a thumbs up. "We were locked in for a bit, but we got the door open no problem. Still, we think something weird might be going on and agreed now would be a good time to leave." Felger tried to make it clear that it wasn't that he couldn't stay, but that it was the wisest decision available.

"You don't say!?" Xander's voice threatened to blow out the radio's speaker and made all three scientists jump. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Xander's voice came on again, quieter this time. "Yes. Listen, absolutely leave. Get out of here now!"

"Right. So, just come on back and we'll head back to the gate," Felger responded slowly, furrowing his brow at Xander's statements.

"No!" Xander's voice rebutted immediately. "Just go and I'll- Shit! How did you catch up so fast!? No. St-stop! Stop trying to threaten me! It doesn't work anymore and it makes me feel bad for you!"

After that exchange, a series of crashes rang out over the radio's speaker. The scientists sat confusion for a while before Felger raised the radio to his mouth again and asked, "Xander? What's going on?"

"There's a thing here. It's big. You need to leave."

"Maybe we can help. Where are you?" Felger desperately spoke into the radio. He didn't know what helping would mean, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

"Unless you have a- Dammit!" Something that sounded like an explosion came through the radio speaker, cutting Xander off. That was followed by another, followed by another. Then Xander's voice came through again, sounding a little farther away now. "Would you be angry if I offered you a banana?"

In response, another explosive sound came through the speaker.

"You're angry, I get it." Xander's voice came through almost immediately after. "But is that because it's offensive, or because I don't actually have one?"

Another explosive sound rang out and then the radio cut off.

"Xander! Xander!?" Felger shouted into the radio desperately.

He got no response.

"What do we do?" Meyers asked after a moment of tense silence.

"Exactly what he told us to. We leave," Coombs responded, standing from the computer and moving towards his section of the luggage pile.

As Coombs packed up what he could run with, Felger stood still, thinking over what'd just happened. It sounded like something was happening. Something dangerous, obviously. He'd said he would help, but that was in the heat of the moment. He still had no idea how he would. He had no weapons, no experience, no anything. If they tried to help, wouldn't they just get in the way?

When Coombs had finished packing, he turned back to find Felger still caught up in thought. He moved over and grabbed Felger's shoulder, shaking him back to reality.

Felger blinked a few times, then looked over at Coombs's face. He stared for a second, then he said, "We need to go help."

"What? No! He said it himself, we should go back to base. Tell other people to come out," Coombs replied almost immediately.

"That's why we'll send Meyers back. With the data cache. He'll make them send reinforcements. In the meantime, we'll make ourselves useful," Felger responded, nodding at his own resolution. It didn't matter if he didn't know how to help. The first step was always to try. Looking over to Meyers, he asked, "You okay with that? Can you carry it on your own?"

Meyers nodded.

"I'm not okay with anything!" Coombs cut in loudly.

"We can't just leave him. It sounded like he was in danger. You don't leave a man behind," Felger rebutted passionately.

"He wants us to leave!"

"All the more reason we should stay!"

"That doesn't make sense, that's just words. I don't want to die here!"

"He'd do the same for us!"

"You just met, you don't know that! Besides, he's just a… baggage…" Even as Coombs spoke, he realized what he was saying and his voice died out.

Felger looked Coombs in the eye and asked, "Can you live with yourself having said that if he dies?"

Coombs looked at his feet and bit his lip. Then slowly mumbled, "How would we even help, anyway?"

"We just have to help our way," Felger declared confidently. He bent over and pulled up the schematic they'd used to direct where their radio signal was broadcasting. Then he pointed at a small room in the middle of the figure. "First, we find a control room. With cameras and better maps, we can do something."

"And if what he was running from is between here and there?" Coombs asked hesitantly.

"Let's go!" Felger shouted, grabbing the laptop and radio before rushing towards the door.

"Dammit Felger, answer my question!" Coombs shouted, chasing after Felger.

Left alone in the small room, Meyers slowly hefted the glossy, black seed. Once he was sure he had a good grasp on it, he headed out the door. As he did so, he thought he heard something fall to the floor, but he didn't have time to check. He needed to get the cavalry.


	6. Chapter 6

Sorry about the late upload. One of our cats who has been with us for 16 years passed away last week and it has effected my motivation to get this up. So sorry about the delay. I hope to get these to you at least once a week going forward.

Disclaimer: I have no claim on either Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Stargate SG-1. They belong to their respective creators.

Bouncing off the wall, Xander shoved himself to the right, down a slightly narrower hallway. After he'd regained his self-taught runner's form, Xander looked back at his pursuer. He thought something so big would have trouble moving through tight spaces. Watching its arms and head grinding along the walls and ceiling; the friction alone should've taken its toll. t seems Xander was naïve, however. Alien Bigfoot didn't show any signs of letting up.

"You're gonna go bald doing that. You know that, right?" Xander shouted back at his pursuer. "You really should slow down a bit. For the sake of your hair."

Bigfoot, having given up on verbal response, moved his hand down. Without slowing, it gripped the edge of the hallway's water channel and ripped up a handful of floor. Then, for not the first time, it threw the newly created rubble at Xander's head.

Xander barely ducked under the missile and kept running. He tried to ignore the uncomfortably loud crash of the projectile crashing to the floor in front of him and spoke up again, "You know, I read only 40% of people get help from Rogaine. That's less than half. You should cherish your hair more."

This earned Xander another chunk of floor, which he dodged to the left. Then, he came upon what looked like anothChaper not-dead-end to his right and took it.

Beneath Xander's ridiculing grin, he broke out in a cold sweat. He had no plan and he didn't know how long he could keep this up. Bigfoot was fast. Way too fast. The only reason why Xander could stay ahead until now was the blood. It was still pouring out of Bigfoot's mouth and onto his depressingly well featured ape chest. That had to make breathing complicated. Bigfoot was definitely moving a lot slower than when this had all started.

In spite of that advantage, Xander wasn't fairing well either. He couldn't confirm it yet, but he was certain something was broken. Adrenaline and raw willpower were pushing him forward now, but who knew how long that'd last. Right now, it seemed like this would all come down to a contest of stamina. Would Xander run out of adrenaline or would Bigfoot collapse from anemia? Which would happen first? Personally, Xander didn't like his odds.

Just as Xander ducked into another random hallway in this massive maze, the radio on his hip gave a chirp. Then it produced a hesitant, male voice, "Xander. Are you there?"

At first, Xander was taken aback and almost stopped moving. Almost. Thankfully, the continuous pounding of leather sole on the floor kept him motivated.

After accepting what'd just happened and realizing whose voice he was hearing, Xander pulled the radio from his belt and shouted into it, "Felger?! Have you reached the gate yet?!"

"Umm," Felger's voice quietly croaked over the radio. "We just got to the control room."

"Control… what?" Xander asked, trying to make sense of his speech while watching for another piece of flying rubble. "Where are you?"

"We're going to help," Felger attempted to push past Xander's confusion. "Where are you now?"

"Some hallway somewhere!" Xander shouted, irritated at being asked the same question he'd been unable to answer for the past fifteen minutes. Quickly shaking off that irritation, Xander remembered the important issue. "Help? What happened to leaving?! Weren't you supposed to be doing that? This place is dangerous."

"See, I told you," Coombs's voice could barely be made out through the radio.

"Exactly, it's dangerous!" Felger shouted. "That's why we're going to help."

"That's great and all, but…" Realizing too late that he'd been distracted, Xander looked back to find another hunk of floor already flying towards him. He hurriedly stumbled to the right, allowing the jagged fragment to sail by.

After the debris crashed on the adjacent wall, Xander felt a stinging sensation on his left cheek followed by an uncomfortable wetness. When he reached up to probe the area, his fingers came back bloody. The attack must've just grazed him. The wound seemed shallow, but it kept throbbing at him. Xander had to grit his teeth to keep from cursing. At himself as much as anyone else.

"We have the map of the facility up," Felger's enterprising voice cut into the silence. "If we can figure out where you are, we can guide you."

Hearing that made Xander stop, mid-dismissal. Having a map was something. A big something. After a few seconds of consideration, he hopefully asked, "Where would you guide me to?"

Following Xander's question, Bigfoot attempted to answer with another piece of rubble he was forced to duck. His radio, however, remained conspicuously silent.

"Where?" Xander asked again, his voice losing most of the vigor it'd regained upon hearing about the map.

"…tha- that's an evolving process…" Felger responded slowly. "Anyway, just tell us where you are first."

"This place is too big," Coombs's voice complained in the background.

"I'm in a corridor," Xander answered confidently. "A long one. Now, where to?"

"There are a lot of corridors," Felger responded hesitantly. "Is there anything you can give us? Have you passed any landmarks?"

Seeing some light filtering through a doorway ahead, Xander dashed forward and glanced inside as he passed. Then he held up the radio again and said, "Just passed a room! It has stuff inside… technical stuff…"

"…Can you describe the tech?" Felger asked hesitantly.

"It was metallic. Definitely metallic. Also glowy."

"…anything else? Anything more?"

"How am I supposed to know what it is?!" Xander shouted back. "It's all a glowy blur!"

"We're not going to get anywhere unless he can slow down and give us a real description," Coombs's voice barely came through the radio.

"Coombs says-" Felger started.

"Don't even say it!" Xander interrupted, bouncing off another wall and taking a new corridor to his right.

"He says he won't do that," Felger said, his voice sounding a little farther away.

"Shouldn't there be some alarms or something to follow?! This gorilla is tear this place apa- Shi-" Xander was forced to stop, mid-shout, to roll away from a surprisingly large section of floor.

"Handsome, gentleman gorilla," Xander called out, giving his pursuer a look of appeal. This earned him another slab to duck.

"Well, what do you want to be called, then!?" Xander shouted in exasperation.

"Why would someone turn that off?" Coombs's voice, right next to Xander's ear, could barely be made out over the barrage.

"Maybe someone who was breaking in would want to do that?" Felger asked helpfully.

"Do you have something for me, guys?!" Xander shouted into the radio.

"We got the alerts back up, but... there's a lot of structural damage," Felger answered after a few seconds. "And more and now more. Is that where you are?"

"I'm pretty sure!" Xander answered, jumping to his right to avoid more debris. "Now can you help me?!"

"Right, uh…" Felger responded, you could almost hear him craning his neck to study the map. "Take the next hallway on your right."

Xander nodded and shouted, "Ok!"

This was more like it. Actual direction. An actual plan. They were making progress. After about a minute, Xander reached the hallway and quickly turned into it. Then Felger told him to take his first left and Xander happily barreled through the doorway.

Then he was in a room. "This, this is a dead end!" Xander shouted into the receiver as he spun around looking for alternate exits.

"It should be an armory. With weapons and stuff." Felger responded desperately. "Can you see any staff weapons?"

Hearing that, Xander actually took in his surroundings and found the wall in front of him covered in Egyptian staves. After replacing his radio on his waist, Xander took one and primed it. He'd gotten two proper training sessions with a staff back at the base. From that he learned that they fired by pressing the wavy part at the base. Also, that they aimed about as easily as a weapon modeled after holding a spitting cobra should. Xander was fundamentally opposed to any gun that didn't have a stock. Or at least a proper handle. Guns gunned best when they were gun shaped.

Fortunately, however… or unfortunately, Xander didn't need to hit anything far or small. Once the massive, coppery ape figure appeared in the armory's doorway, Xander pressed the staff's trigger. A deadly globule of yellow light was shot towards the only thing in his vision. Then, nothing happened. Nothing good, anyway. The energy lance Xander had fired struck a golden bubble which appeared over Bigfoot's skin and dissipated into nothing.

Seeing this, Xander was stunned for a second. Bigfoot, on the other hand, attempted to grin. With the pain and blood in its mouth, the best it could manage was a grimace, but the feeling carried across.

Bigfoot confidently closed on Xander, completely eclipsing any route of escape. As it approached, Xander fired off another shot with the same result. Then he gave up on firing and swung the staff with all his might. This time, no bubble obstructed him. Instead, Bigfoot reached up and grabbed the end of the staff.

Hitting Bigfoot's palm was like hitting a brick wall. It refused to budge at all and Xander's stance was broken. Then Bigfoot gave one, easy yank and Xander was sent tumbling forward. As Bigfoot lifted on foot, assumedly to crush Xander's head, Xander let go of the staff. Then he pushed forwards with both hands so they would stand between his face and the ground. Once that was taken care of, he continued on with his momentum.

Rolling forward, Xander was barely able to pass between Bigfoot's legs. As soon as he made it through, Bigfoot attempted to spin and catch his head in its hands. The cramped room stopped it, however, giving Xander enough time to slip out of the armory and continue running down the hallway.

Once he was free, Xander recovered the radio from his waist and shouted into it, "That didn't work at all!"

"What, how?" Felger responded after a few seconds. "What happened?"

"A bubble of light came up and stopped the blast. Then it stole the staff," Xander answered irritably.

As Xander was talking, his vision suddenly went white and the right side of his face was bathed in a searing heat. Then he heard a small explosion from the passage ahead of him. Once his vision returned, Xander looked behind just in time to see a yellow bolt of light flying towards him. Reflexively, Xander dodged to the right, but either way the bolt would've missed him by a few feet.

As the bolt exploded against the wall further ahead in the passage, Xander looked behind again to see Bigfoot charging forward. Though, now he had a new toy. Honestly, it looked a little awkward. Bigfoot's huge body didn't entirely fit in the hallway to begin with. Now he was trying to run while holding up an impractically large staff… It made for some complex geometry Xander didn't want to contemplate.

Thanks to Bigfoot's and the weapon's impractical size, Bigfoot's aim wasn't great. In fact, it wasn't really aim at all. It was more of a random spread as Bigfoot moved the staff to wherever it would actually fit. That was at least an improvement over the hunks of floor.

A few seconds later, after a bolt almost took off his calf, Xander changed his mind. Random wasn't good. You can't dodge random. "Now he's shooting at me!" Xander shouted into the radio, remembering its existence.

"You said it was a gorilla?" Felger asked curiously. "Why would it have a Goa'uld shield?"

"An experimental subject…?" Coomb's absent minded voice filtered through the radio.

"Ok guys, I'm really going to need you to not care about that right now," Xander pleaded desperately. "Do something to help me. Something that doesn't make it stronger."

"Oh, right… wel- hold on."

"I'll just hold tight, then," Xander muttered, reflexively ducking as another bolt of energy passed over his head.

Xander spent another couple minutes running while frantically flailing his limbs to avoid the unpredictable rain of fire. Then his radio squawked to life again. "Xander, are you there?" Felger asked with a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

"Barely, can you get me out of here now?"

"We have an idea. First, take the second hallway on your left."

"You aren't doing this so you can give Bigfoot a machine gun, are you?" Xander asked caustically.

"Who?"

"Never mind."

Xander followed Felger's instructions. Ducking down one corridor and another, all the while dodging yellow, fire bullets. Eventually, he found himself in a another room. This time, however, it wasn't a broom closet full of weapons. It was a cavernous expanse that felt like half a football field to Xander. American football. American space Egypt football.

For a second, Xander felt liberated. Finally escaping the network of claustrophobic corridors, Xander's mind greedily expanded into the vast space. A few seconds after that, his exhilaration turned into frustration when he realized what the space meant.

"He's going to be able to shoot me in here!" Xander shouted into his radio. "Was that part of your plan, Felger?"

"You just have to keep running forward. If you can make it halfway down, you should be fine."

"What are you planning?" Xander asked, picking up his speed as Bigfoot emerged into the room.

"Just trust us," Felger demanded. Though his voice lacked any of the certainty needed to be comforting.

"Like I have a choice now!" Xander shouted, running forward and vaulting over a small counter that stood between him and the rest of the open room.

After about five steps, Xander heard the shound of something charging behind him and he desperately jumped to his left. A few seconds later, he felt a wave of heat pass under his right armpit and a bolt exploded against the floor ahead of him.

"Serpentine, serpentine," Xander reminded himself, zigging and zagging himself further into the room. He'd seen that in a movie once and it'd made sense to him. That was the best he could go on. Demons didn't generally wield space laser cannons. Or normal cannons. Some of them spat stuff, like acid, or fire, or spit… it stained really bad. Either way, the experience didn't transfer.

Xander's mind was completely blank as everything around him caught fire and exploded. His body was moving on its own. Fueled purely by the will to not explode. Which is a fairly strong force, as emotions go.

After making way too little progress for as long as it felt he'd been running, Xander heard the familiar sizzling of a plasma discharge. This time, much closer than before. As if it was directly behind him. As his brain spent time figuring out what that meant, his body had already decided on a plan. It felt like every muscle he had contracted at once. He lurched forward and tumbled into a mess on the ground. As he did, a bolt of yellow energy passed through the, now empty, space he'd serpentine himself into.

Seeing this, Xander only had one thought. "The villains are supposed to be bad shots!" He shouted indignantly.

Then, an acute feeling of motionlessness flooded him and he remembered the situation he was in. He lunged forward to start running again. Thanks to this, he was able to avoid getting and ankle blown off by another shot. However, his desperation to move propelled him up and then down again.

Tumbling to the floor a second time, Xander landed on his left elbow and immediately bit his lips to avoid screaming obscenities.

"Just a little farther, Xander," Felger's voice called from the radio Xander had returned to his belt.

"I'm going, I'm going," Xander called back incoherently, falling forward three more times.

"Ok! Do it now!" Felger shouted out.

"What?! Do What?!" Xander asked desperately. Then he started rising. Not standing, just going up. For a second, he was dumbfounded by that sensation. Then he looked down and saw that a three foot thick section of floor he was on was pushing him towards the ceiling.

"Move, Xander!" Felger called out.

Not needing a second statement, Xander immediately toppled forward off of the rapidly rising wall. He hit the floor hard enough to blow all the wind from his lungs. On the plus side, he wasn't crushed to death. He chalked that up as a win.

By the time Xander had pushed himself to sit up, the rising section of floor struck a descending section of the ceiling, closing Xander away from Bigfoot with a sonorous gong.

"This was a dumb plan," Xander complained, not even bothering to press the button on his radio. "But it wasn't bad."

Xander spent a few seconds leaning against the reassuringly thick wall, catching his breath. After a while, a loud, metallic thump from behind made him jump. Another couple thumps came after, but the wall didn't show any signs of giving way.

Seeing that, Xander relaxed and lifted his radio again. "Ok. What now?"

"There's an exit on the other side of the room," Felger answered, his voice brimming with conceit. "You can leave from there. It shouldn't be able to get through the blast doors, so it'll have to go all the way around to your side using a series of hallways. Should take him at least fifteen minutes. Enough time to get out of here, I think."

"Getting out is good," Xander declared, forcing himself to his feet.

As Xander was about to leave, he turned back to look at the large blast doors one last time. Now that he actually examined them, he noticed that they were covered in a series of black char marks. As if someone had spent a lot of time shooting them. Though, that merely added to their reassurance. They should hold.

Xander turned to head out. Then he heard a strange thunk from the other side of the blast doors. That stopped him in his tracks and made him furrow his brows. He remembered that the scientists were able to get themselves out of the locked room. He had no idea how they did it, but he started to get nervous of Bigfoot doing the same thing.

"You guys have access to cameras, right?" Xander asked the radio. "Can you tell me what Bigfoot is doing over there? Doesn't sound like he's leaving."

"Sure," Felger answered. "Pull it up, Coombs."

"I'm doing it already," Coombs responded grouchily. "And stop pretending to be my superior officer."

"Yeah, yeah," Felger responded casually.

Then the two went silent. After half a minute, Xander's nerves grew heavier and he decided to prod them. "Guys? What's going on?"

"Oh, nothing," Felger responded in a pensive voice that contradicted his words. "There were some staff cannons on the side of the room. It pulled one from its tripod… but don't worry, that shouldn't be able to break through. I don't think."

"Your confidence is contagious," Xander responded sarcastically, jogging towards the exit.

"What is it doing with that? What did it just rip out?" Felger wondered aloud, ignoring Xander's barb.

"I don't know," Coombs's voice came through faintly. "The resolution isn't good enough."

Xander resolved to ignore their unnerving conversation and pushed forward. After a few seconds, he neared the exit. Lightly climbing over another counter, Xander approached the door. Then he heard a sharp pop, followed by a continuous, high screech. He couldn't help looking back towards the noise. When he did, he found a new blemish on the thick doors. This wasn't an old, charred blast mark, but a glowing, red dot of heat around the size of his head.

"What'd going on, guys?" Xander asked urgently, not waiting for their response before fleeing into the next corridor.

"I don't know," Felger responded, just as desperate. "The ape did something to the turret and now it's firing a continuous beam… That's absolutely going to melt the gun."

"Melting the wall is what it's doing," Coombs's melancholy voice cemented Xander's fears.

"He's right. You're not going to have time to escape!" Felger shouted from the radio.

"So what do I do?! Where do I go?!" Xander shouted back.

"J- hold on."

Xander looked down the two paths he could take and hesitated. He had no idea which way would bring him closer to the facility's exit at this point. He had no idea what Felger would come up with. Or if he could come up with anything. He hesitated. However, the persistent screeching behind him forced him forward.

For no reason at all, he chose left and started running. After a couple minutes of aimlessly rushing down an empty hallway, Xander's radio squeaked to life again. "Xander, are you there?"

"Yeah, here," Xander picked up immediately, not pausing his motion.

"Where are you?"

"I don't know. I went left."

"How far left?

"Far? How far can I run in the time you weren't talking?"

"I don't know. Just slow down for a second and look at your surroundings. What's nearby?"

Not being directly pursued by a giant ape monster, Xander had the latitude to stop for a second. Slowing to a stop, Xander poked his head into the nearest room and said, "It has a reclining chair and a bunch of stuff hanging from the ceiling. Sharp stuff… I hope it's a dentist's office."

"Ok… I think we've found you," Felger answered after a few seconds. "Turn around and take the tenth door on your right."

"I don't love the idea of going backwards…"

"We have a plan."

"Is it a good plan?"

'That's… uh-huh."

"You didn't say yes. Why didn't you say yes?"

With no further communication from the radio, Xander ran backwards through the hall as fast as he could. With every step, the knowledge that he was moving closer to the giant ape monster was growing more potent. By the time he reached the indicated door, Xander was desperate. He leapt inside and threw himself against the wall to the right of the doorframe, as if he was hiding from some invisible threat.

After a few seconds, Xander caught his breath and mentally recovered enough to realize he looked like a moron. He slowly separated from the wall he'd glued himself to and surveyed the room. Once he had, he held up his radio and glared at it irritably for a second before pressing the button.

"Another armory?" Xander spat into the receiver. "You didn't catch onto how bad an idea that was before?"

"No, there should be a door to your left," Felger came on a few seconds later. "Can you see it?"

Xander skeptically turned to the left wall and examined it. As Felger had said, in a break between shelves of staff weapons, there was a sturdy, metallic door. Closed. "Are you going to open it for me?" Xander asked expectantly. Then the image of a Walmart security guard trying to "hack" the doors flashed through his mind. "Can you open doors from there?"

"Yes, but not that one," Felger answered a moment later. "We think it's broken somehow."

Xander took a closer look at the door. "Broken is an understatement. Looks welded shut."

"That would explain why we couldn't access it."

"And what's on the otherside?"

"A few dozen Jaffa."

"…And what are they doing?" Xander asked warily.

"Arguing and staring at the door. I don't think they're happy there."

"And what do you expect me to do?"

"You're going to get them out," Felger answered confidently.

"How?" Xander asked, not sharing in Felger's excited assurance.

"First, take one of the staff weapons off the wall."

"I don't think shooting the weld off will work nearly as well as shooting a lock. Honestly, I think movies way oversimplify gun lock picking as it is."

"You won't be firing it… not this one," Felger responded cryptically.

Xander narrowed his eye, but pulled a weapon from the wall all the same. Once he had the alien instrument in his hand, he asked, "Ok, what now."

"There should be a panel near the end of the firing mechanism. Remove that."

Xander had to flip the staff over three times, but eventually he found something that looked right. He gave one attempt at prying the panel open with his finger nails. Then he gave up and pulled a knife from his boot. Forcing the edge into the small fissure, Xander worked it back and forth until the panel popped open.

When Xander had completely removed the panel, he found what looked like a huge Christmas light full of Gatorade. Glowing, yellow Gatorade. Xander frowned at that curiously for a second, the he asked, "What now?"

"There should be a capsule full of liquid Naquadah inside. Very carefully remove it and gently place it in front of the door. Do not drop it."

"Liquid what? Never mind, I found the Christmas ornament," Xander answered, casually pulling the small bulb from the staff. After looking at the mesmerizing glow for a second, his face stiffened and he asked, "Why shouldn't' I drop it?"

"You don't know?"

"If I did, I wouldn't ask."

"Are you holding it now?"

"Yes."

"Then just be very careful."

"Why won't you tell me?" Xander asked, narrowing his eye at his radio.

"I don't want you to get nervous and drop it," Felger explained reasonably.

This reason didn't resonate with Xander, however. Frowning, he said, "It's glowing. Is it radioactive? Glass doesn't protect you from radiation. I read that on the internet."

"Not everything that glows is radioactive," Coombs responded judgmentally.

"But everything that's radioactive glows," Xander shot back immediately.

"No… No, it's not," Felger replied slowly.

"You don't know. You're not a radiation scientist."

"Of course we aren't," Coombs responded exasperatedly. "That doesn't exist."

"You don't exist!"

"Can we focus?!" Felger shouted loud enough to blow out the radio's speaker. For a few seconds, silence hung in the air. Then Felger calmly requested, "Xander, can you place the Naquadah in front of the door?"

"I'll make the door as festive as you want," Xander grumbled bitterly. "But I don't love how you refuse to communicate."

After Xander placed the radioactive Christmas light at the base of the melted door. Then Felger told him to get another. Xander grabbed the nearest staff weapon, one that seemed to have fallen to the floor, and started to open it. Before he cold, however, he saw that the tip was blackened and warped as if it had been fried. He considered asking about this, but decided against it. Instead, he focused on the work.

Once Xander had placed two Christmas lights at the door and one in the center of the room, Felger asked him to move the weapons out of the armory. With the hallway now covered in a haphazard pile of staves, Xander took one and headed to a room opposite the armory. Still following instructions, he took aim at the Christmas light in the center of the armory and fired the staff. Then he fired again and again. On his fourth shot, the yellow plasma bolt hit the bulb and then everything went white and silent. Like Christmas Eve.

On instinct alone, Xander jumped to his left and took shelter behind the room's wall. If he hadn't he was sure he'd have been burned to ash. At least, that was the sense that white-hot light had given him.

Xander spent the next eternity rolling on the ground, contemplating the meaning of life. Eventually he recovered, however, and was able to see anything. Once he could, he poked his head through the doorway and looked out towards the armory. There, he saw a continuous stream of men in grey armor. They all ran out of the smokey armory, grabbed a staff, and charged down the hallway towards where Bigfoot should've been.

When the stream of armed men finally died down, the last man stopped as he was leaving the armory. His eyes met Xander's and they stared at each other. In the other man's gaze, Xander didn't see anything friendly and he prepared for a fight. The man seemed to come to the opposite conclusion, however. With one last glance to Xander, the man grabbed a staff and continued off towards his brethren.

Xander waited for a few seconds before exiting his own room and running in the opposite direction. He rushed onward without any sense of navigation until the ringing in his ears finally started to die down. Once he was able to hear Felger's voice again, Xander regained his navigation system and some sense of comfort.

At least, he thought he'd gained comfort. On the entire journey to pick up the two scientists, Xander had to ignore their conversation. He wasn't in the mood to hear their terrified awe at how Bigfoot decapitated a man with its bare hands. Not when he'd been so close to that minutes ago.

Once the three were reunited at the control room, Felger led them out of the facility and they didn't stop running until they were through the gate. Safely back on earth, with the iris closed, Xander could finally relax enough to realize his entire body was in excruciating pain. Then he promptly fell over.

Author's note: There was some confusion a couple chapters ago surrounding Xander being unable to recognize the Goa'uld. That was never my intention in that scene. The idea was that, if someone were beside him and asked him, "What was that thing?" Then he would've been able to answer easily. However, due to his limited experience and distraction at the time, Goa'uld wasn't the first word to pop into his mind.

If I'm being honest, I should've explicitly used the word at least once in that encounter, but I didn't because I wasn't paying attention. I apologize for any confusion.

Anyway, this marks the end of the 3 nerds saga. I originally wanted this to only be a couple chapters, but best laid plans and all that. We'll be going back to jack in the next chapter. Thanks for your patience.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I have no claim on either Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Stargate SG-1. They belong to their respective creators.

Stepping through an interdimensional hole through space and time, Colonel Jack O'Neill yawned and stretched his back. The last few days had been exhausting. Not the satisfying kind of exhausting either. The special type of exhausting that comes from getting nothing done.

He spent some time mulling over what exactly he'd tell the General during the debriefing. For some reason, Hammond didn't like it when Jack tried to start and end the meeting by saying there was nothing to report. Jack always felt the key to a good briefing was honesty, not wordiness, but the General disagreed.

As Jack plodded down the metal catwalk, he noticed an oppressive sense of tension hung over the faces of the servicemen guarding the gate. Panning his vision up to the clear window into the control center, Jack saw Hammond making an even sterner expression than usual. When their eyes met, Hammond motioned behind him and Jack sighed. He'd be going from one fruitless meeting to another. No rest for the weary.

"What's got everyone so worried?" Samantha Carter asked from beside him as the two left the gate room.

"I don't know," Jack answered as he gave another yawn. "But I'm betting it'll keep me from getting in an afternoon nap."

"You need a nap already?" Sam asked, giving him her playfully ridiculing grin. "Are you getting that old already?"

"Just cause my hair's grey and all my joints are shitty doesn't mean I'm getting old."

"Those are two of the major symptoms."

"That's just words."

"Science is what it is."

"Words!" O'Neill dismissed, feeling a little more energetic as he got into the conversation. "Haven't you heard that age is all about what's in your mind? What does that make me?"

"A thirteen year old boy?"

"I'm in the prime of my life!" Jack declared happily. Then he threw open the doors to the briefing room and asked, "Isn't that right, General?"

General Hammond looked over from where he was standing at the head of the conference table, but refused to give any answer.

Jack waited for a few seconds. Then he asked again, "Aren't I right?"

"Jack," Hammond slowly responded. "How long have we known each other?"

It took Jack a moment to do the math. Finding the number depressing, he answered, "I try not to keep count, General."

"In all that time, you've taught me not to enter your conversations half way."

"He was saying he's a thirteen year old boy," Carter chimed in helpfully, entering the room ahead of Jack.

"I was saying I'm in the prime of my life," Jack corrected, following her lead and taking a seat at the table.

Hammond, still standing, looked down at them both and asked, "How was the trip?"

"Nothing happened," Jack answered bluntly, leaning back in his chair and cradling his head in his hands.

"I was able to study the Tok'ra crystal technology some more, but it'll probably be decades before humanity can reproduce it." Carter spoke up immediately. After she was finished, Hammond continued to stare at her expectantly. Enduring this for half a minute, she weakly added, "Other than that, we weren't able to do much…"

"The whole point of sending you both out there for almost a week was to get information on the recent movements of the Goa'uld," Hammond declared, narrowing his eyes irritably. "After all this time, you got nothing?"

"I found out that the stoic one likes coffee," Jack perked up to answer.

"They're all stoic," Hammond shot back bitterly.

"I found out that one of them likes coffee," Jack amended.

Hammond glared at the table for a moment. Then he reached up to rub his eyes. "This is what we get for trying to ally with an insurgent organization. Right hand not knowing the left. It's always a mess."

When it seemed Hammond had vented his complaints, Carter spoke up hopefully, "It wasn't like they ever refused to tell us anything."

"No, they just refused to meet us in the first place," Jack cut in.

"They were busy," Carter corrected politically. "Everyone seemed busy. Very hectic. Even my father couldn't afford to meet for more than a few minutes at a time. It was bad timing. We were…"

"In the way," Jack completed for her.

"Y-yes. In the way," Carter agreed hesitantly.

"Were you at least able to figure out what had them so busy?" Hammond asked, shifting his gaze between his two subordinates.

"They were pretty tight lipped about it," Jack answered, trying not to wince from the General's mix of disappointment and frustration.

On the verge of criticizing their complete failure, Hammond stopped himself and let off a sigh. Finally sinking into the chair he'd been standing in front of, he asked, "Are we going to have to worry about internal unrest in the Tok'ra on top of everything else?"

"I don't think that's the problem," Jack declared absent mindedly rubbing his five day growth of stubble. "The eyebrows woman-"

"Is that how you think of her?" Carter cut in with a mix of shock and sympathetic offense.

"They're always at the same angle," Jack replied defensively. "It's almost supernatural."

'What did she say?" Hammond asked impatiently.

"Nothing really," Jack answered with a shrug. "I just feel like she would've been giddier if there was a coup going on."

"They might be planning to move their base again," Carter added thoughtfully.

"Not telling us about it?" Hammond asked critically.

"Maybe they're worried about a leak on our side," Carter responded uncertainly.

"Aren't they always," Hammond spat out cynically. Massaging his temples, he added, "We're coming up on our budget for internal inquiries, too."

"There's a budget for that?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.

"They instituted it last year," Hammond answered with a wave of his hand. "If we exceed it, I'll have to give a presentation to the Secretary of Defense. We don't even know if inquiring does anything for us."

"Last time, the inquirer himself did turn out to be the leak," Carter added.

"Don't remind me," Hammond responded with a weary sigh. Then he took a glass and the pitcher of water from the center of the table and poured himself a glass. After draining half of it, he put the glass and asked, "Is there anything else?"

Jack exchanged a glance with Carter and found that she had nothing to add. After a few seconds, Jack said, "You seem tense. What's going on?"

Hammond's face grew sour in an instant and he said, "I guess you could call it more problems from the Tok'ra… We sent out a team on that science mission they asked for help with."

"And what poor schmuck did you get to act as pack mule?" Jack asked with a smile.

"Alexander Harris."

"Oh?" Jack asked, raising his eyebrows. "And how is that going?"

"We don't know," Hammond answered stoically. "Meyers came through the gate about twenty minutes before you did, carrying something big and black.

"Alone?" Jack asked, his body straightening up in an instant. "What happened? Where are the others?"

"Like I said, we don't know," Hammond answered, meeting Jack's gaze. "After stepping out of the gate, Meyers rolled his ankle and rolled down the cat walk. He hit his head on what he was carrying and passed out. He hasn't woken up yet."

"Have you sent anyone through?" Jack asked, bracing one hand against his armrest, as if he were going to shoot up and rush out.

"We can't even risk sending through a UAV," Hammond answered firmly. "We have no idea what's going on over there. Meyers could've come back for any number of reasons. Things could still be going smoothly over there. If they are and we seond someone through, Sha-Wujin could interpret that as a breach of our agreement. Then, they'd be in the middle of a suddenly hostile base, completely unarmed."

"They might be experiencing that now anyway," Jack shot back, trying to keep his voice even.

"For now, we have to trust in the Tok'ra's initial report. They are our allies."

"Like this would be their first operation to go sour."

"I'm going to give Meyers another twenty-five minutes to wake up. If he hasn't by then, we'll send through a UAV and evaluate the situation."

"And SG-1 will be ready to go in after it," Jack declared immediately.

"No," Hammond rejected just as quickly. "The only benefit anyone could get from capturing Felger and Coombs would be getting bait to lure you out."

"Even if that's true,' Jack tried to interrupt.

"Time and again, the Goa'uld have done absurd things to capture you," Hammond raised his voice to talk over Jack. "We aren't playing into their hands this time. If it comes to that, I'm sending in SG-3. They are completely capable of a rescue mission and have properly rested since their last mission."

"I got that kid in this," Jack declared solemnly. "That makes him my responsibility."

"The General has a point," Carter spoke up softly. "You're hardly in the state to rush into enemy fire right now. We both need rest."

Jack glowered at the room in general, but couldn't come up with an argument against either of them.

After a few seconds, Hammond was about to dismiss them when Sergeant Harriman's voice came over the loud speaker. "Unscheduled off-world activation. General Hammond to the control room."

As soon as the alarm started blaring, all three of them stood up and rushed for the gate's control room. Once they entered the dim room, illuminated by the huge window showing the gate, Sergeant Harriman looked up from his computer. "We're getting Felger's iris code," he declared quickly.

"Open it up," Hammond commanded with a nod.

With a few keystrokes on Harriman's computer, the massive, metallic shield over the gate spun away, revealing a rippling blue pool behind it. For a while, the gate produced nothing. Mysteriously shifting its azure surface with no result. Then, suddenly, a figure appeared from the blue glow. A man, wearing glasses with thick, yet receding, hair. A few seconds later, this man was followed by another and then Xander emerged from the portal.

They didn't have any of the equipment they left with, but they were all in one piece. At least, they had as many pieces as Jack had ever known them to have. A few seconds after Xander exited the gate, it closed and the iris followed suit. As the control room let out a collective sigh of relief at the team's safety, Xander leaned back against the iris. Then, his face took on an excruciating expression and he slid onto the floor.

Immediately, the surroundings flew into an uproar of multi-faceted tension. They were simultaneously desperate to help a fallen comrade and worried about the potential dangers that might've followed him through the gate.

For his part, Jack ignored Carter's calls for temperance and dashed out of the control room. Jack made it down to the gate room in time to see two servicemen carrying Xander away in a stretcher. For a moment, he considered following them, but he knew he'd get in the way. Instead, he turned his attention back into the room. There, standing at the base of the ramp leading to the gate, were two disheveled scientists trying to catch their breath.

Jack quickly apprehended the two and brought them to the briefing room he'd been in minutes before. About a minute after they'd entered, Sam and Hammond followed them and the five person interview started.

Interview was probably the wrong word. The whole proceeding started very tense and fruitless. Then, when word came from Dr. Fraiser that Xander wasn't in any danger, things became very relaxed very quickly. Especially for the scientists. The two of them seemed to exhibit the separate stages a stretched rubber band will go through after being cut. Felger kept shouting "Wooo!" and asking for high fives and Coombs collapsed into a chair and stared at nothing.

Once the two seemed capable of speech, they were able to have something reminiscent of a debriefing. Though, Jack wasn't sure it was any more cogent than "Wooo!"

"They went on an archeology field trip, got stuck in a room, and saved Xander from a rampaging gorilla," Jack recounted skeptically as they walked down the hall towards the infirmary.

"The way he said it, you'd think Felger personally charged in with an assault rifle and a knife," Carter responded with a nod. "Somehow I can't see him as Errol Flynn."

"That's an old reference, even for me," Jack observed, raising an eyebrow at his much younger colleague.

"It's still relevant," Carter rebutted defensively.

"Yeah, just as relevant as polio," Jack shot back with a grin. "You know all those great polio jokes. I like the one about F.D.R. and his standing ovation."

"That's cruel."

"Insensitive," Jack corrected, raising one finger at her. "And he's dead… and the president. I don't think he cares."

"It was their first field mission," Hammond cut in, putting them back on track. "They were understandably excited. I'm sure we can get more out of them later."

"As long as I'm not the one who has to do it," Jack requested with a wave of his hand. "Looking at them depresses me."

"They are our colleagues," Carter declared critically. "You could treat them with less open disdain."

"I have no disdain for them. It's just that their faces are depressing."

"That's somehow worse."

"And feel sorry for them… from a distance." After giving that last line, Jack stepped forward and opened the door to a world in flux.

The base infirmary showed all the trappings of recent chaos. Various machines and materials, which Jack didn't care to be familiar with, were out of place, but no longer in use. The drawers full of gauze and disposable prod-y things were thrown open. In the middle of that, stood their diminutive doctor.

"You look like someone who just saved a life," Jack observed happily upon meeting Dr. Fraiser's eyes.

"Not quite," Fraiser answered with a half-smile. "But if he'd been through much more, I would've had to."

"That bad?" Carter asked as the doctor gestured for them to follow her.

"He had three broken ribs, a hairline fracture of his left humerus, and his right ring and pinky fingers were dislocated." Dr. Fraiser answered with healthy dose of clinical detachment. "Plus, his skin was torn in dozens of places. That wasn't helped by the fact that I ran out of thread halfway through and couldn't remember where I put the extra."

"Maybe having a couple glasses of wine while taking inventory wasn't such a great idea, after all," Carter observed with an apologetic smile.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Hammond declared firmly.

Dr. Fraiser cleared her throat loudly and gestured to the bed they were now standing before. On it sat a half-mummified Xander, staring absently at the ceiling.

As Dr. Fraiser turned to leave, she leaned towards the trio and whispered, "I gave him a bit of extra anesthesia. We don't want a repeat of what happened last time."

"To be fair, he had just been kidnapped and he didn't know we were the good guys yet," Jack attempted a defense.

"We can't be too careful," Dr. Fraiser responded with a smile that didn't quite meet her eyes. Then she left to continue cleaning her infirmary.

"I don't think she's going to forget that soon," Carter observed as she watched the good doctor busying herself.

"It wasn't exactly his fault," Jack protested weakly.

Then he turned to face Xander. He was covered in bandages and didn't look all that sharp. As Jack studied the boy, Xander's gaze drifted around and he noticed his visitors. "Mr. Colonel man," he called out unevenly, raising the arm not covered in a cast. "How was yur trip to the snake people?"

"It went well…" Jack answered slowly. As he did, he reconsidered what was supposed to come next. Technically it was their reason for being here, though, so he may as well get it out to the way. "What happened over there? We heard something got in the way?"

"It's an orangut'n, g'rilla, bigfoot," Xander answered quickly.

"Those are just a bunch of nouns," Carter obsereved.

"You're a noun!" Xander shouted back. "…professional …noun?"

"And what exactly happened?" Jack asked, his smile growing stiffer by the second.

"He broke the guy…" Xander answered before falling into a blank silence. After a few seconds, his whole body shot up and he continued, "He picked me up in one hand and crushed me like… crush. Then I stole his tongue and threw it in his eye." As Xander spoke, he attempted to act out what he was describing. Yet, somehow that only made his words less comprehensible.

"The boy's on drugs." Hammond observed from the side. "Maybe we should try this later."

"I'm not on drugs!" Xander immediately shot back. Then his face clouded and he cocked his head to the side before asking, "...am I on drugs? 're you tryin' to take avantage of me, doctor?"

"You need rest," Dr. Fraiser called out, not looking up from reorganizing the medical supplies.

"You juss want me to sleep so I… you can…" After making it halfway through his thought, Xander trailed off and stared blankly into space. Just as Jack was debating whether or not he should prod the boy or leave, Xander's head shot up and he asked, "Why's my mouth taste like pennies?"

"May be blood from earlier," Fraiser posited, finally looking up from her work. Then she immediately returned her gaze to the medical supplies as she added, "I have mouthwash somewhere around here."

"No matter what willer says, I ne'er ate pennies," Xander defended, seemingly ignorant of Fraiser's offer. "I put 'em in my mouth 'cause it made 'er laugh. I played pretendeded. But I never swallowed them! Cause I know what food is and I was saving up for a stretch Armstrong."

"I believe you…" Jack responded, his entire body cloaking itself in discomfort. Even he didn't have the heart to make fun of the kid in this condition, at least for now. That put Jack in a barely precedented situation usually reserved for funerals. He didn't like it at all.

"He was really stretchy, did you know that?" Xander mused, shifting his gaze back to the ceiling. "I 's gonna fix 'im, but dad threw him out cause 's goo got on the carpet."

"That's… too bad."

Xander nodded slowly, his eye still covered in a thick glaze. Then he turned back towards Jack and started eagerly repeating, "Jack! Jack! Jack! Jack!"

"What is it?" Jack asked, too slowly to not be a little annoyed.

"Tell me a story!"

"You seem to have this covered," Carter observed, edging away from the bed.

"Don't abandon me!" Jack cried out, only now noticing that the general had slunk off long ago.

"I have important work," Carter lied, turning her eyes towards the door. "And it looks like you have a story to tell."

Jack glared at Carter's rapidly retreating figure. Then he turned back to the young man who was still bouncing around somewhere in the upper stratosphere. After spending a few seconds looking over Xander's expectant eyes, Jack sighed. Then he started, "When the gate first opened, it connected to a place called Abydos."

"What was there!?" Xander asked with the excitement of a seven year old watching a pantomime. "Was it laser shark bears!? Or snakes… why's it always got be snakes? …Indiana Jones."

"No, there were no snakes," Jack answered, trying to ignore most of it. "But there were some bird people."

"Cool! Could they fly!?"

Jack turned his eyes to the ceiling and thought about that question very carefully. "Technically, you can say they could…"

Like that, Jack spent the next three hours regaling Xander of his glorious adventures. He was certain the youth understood almost none of it, but he was very enthusiastic and that enthusiasm got contagious after a while. When Xander finally fell asleep, Jack was set free to go extract a little revenge on Carter. You're never supposed to leave a man behind.

Looking around the room at the mixture of Goa'uld and Tau'ri computing equipment, he was sure this had been where his legacy had been kept. He also had a good idea of where it could be found now.

Those fleeing mice. If he'd kept his wits about him, he should've been able to catch them. However, it was becoming abundantly clear that the matter of aggression was a greater issue than he thought. Creating a body with a satisfactory degree of raw power left his mind too easily clouded during difficult situations. Something he would have to address in the next redesign. For now, he simply wanted a replacement. Being mute was a state unfitting for one of his stature.

He turned to leave the room. Then he stopped when he saw it glittering amongst the scattered garbage. He quickly stooped to recover it. He smiled when he saw the beautiful, golden rod sitting atop his palm. With only this he could be satisfied. No. He wouldn't be satisfied until everything was repaid. Until the heavens trembled and knelt before him as befitting his title.

This was a start, however. He kept smiling to himself as he exited the petty palace and walked towards the gate. First he would get a spare body. Then he would recover his legacy. While he was at it, he might net himself a small profit for his troubles.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I have no claim on either Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Stargate SG-1. They belong to their respective creators.

Chapter 8

Sitting on the edge of the long conference table, Xander tried his best to look attentive. His results were mixed. He couldn't bring himself to focus on any conversation involving the word architecture. At least when it wasn't talking about big rocks and instead ones and zeroes. Xander picked at the edge of his cast and quietly regretted begging for his place in this meeting.

"Can you give me a summary in ten words?" Jack asked, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking only slightly more with it than Xander.

Hearing the word summary, Xander perked his ears hopefully.

Carter, standing at the head of the table, cleared her throat and answered, "By Combining the Goa'uld code shifts supplied by the Tok'ra, techniques developed during the cold war, and several contemporary-"

"After three weeks we managed to get into the data cache," Daniel interrupted quickly, moving in front of Carter.

"We have a dozen networked computers pulling off everything as we speak," Carter added, giving Daniel a sour look.

"That was eleven words," Jack declared, staring at both his hands with all their fingers extended.

"How long will it take to get everything copied?" Hammond asked, unenthusiastically flipping through the paper hand-out.

Carter made a rueful face and answered, "We can't say exactly. We aren't even sure how much there is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was hundreds of terabytes. All of it in a completely alien architecture and encrypted."

"How long?" Hammond asked again.

"Weeks?" Carter answered, looking uncertain in her own answer.

"Is that the whole reason we came here?" Xander asked, trying to sound more surprised than impatient. "Have we really gotten nothing out of it so far?"

After he spoke up, the whole room shifted its attention to him, leaving Xander to shrink back uncomfortably before asking, "Is there a seniority thing? Am I not allowed to interrupt?" Leaning over to Jack, he loudly whispered, "You say it instead."

"Is this the only reason we're here?" Jack asked dutifully. "You could've just sent out an eleven word memo, or told me as we passed each other in the hallway."

"If we'd done that, then Carter wouldn't have gotten to reveal her process," Daniel remarked with a smile. "She was so excited about it."

"Daniel," Jack started with all the solemnity of one addressing a murder suspect. "It's pizza day."

"Sometimes it feels like every day is pizza day for you," Xander observed. As he spoke, he tried to rest his elbow on the table, but the cast was slipperier than he thought. He almost slammed his chin on the tabletop before catching himself.

"It's different when the government foots the bill," Jack responded with a wave of his hand.

"Yeah, cause they get the cheap stuff."

"It might be cheap to them," Jack responded, waving his finger with the air of one instructing a disciple. "But it's free to me. That's what it's all about."

"It's not free. We all have to pay for it. That's how taxes work."

"I'm a government employee," Jack rebutted smugly. "I don't pay taxes. They just pay less than they theoretically would."

Xander gave Jack a scowl. Then, after a second, his face brightened and he asked, "I'm a government employee now, too, right? DO I have to pay taxes?"

"You're a private contractor," Daniel cut in knowingly. "They pay you less and you have to pay taxes."

"That seems not ideal…" Xander remarked sullenly.

"You can always join up," Jack suggested. "Ladies love a man in uniform.

"Strippers," Xander corrected, staring off into somewhere very distant. "Women love strippers in uniform."

"I have work to do today," Hammond finally cut in.

"Right, sorry… sir," Xander responded, sinking back into his chair.

"Where even were we?" Carter asked, running her hand through her hair.

"I think it was my turn," Daniel answered. Then he turned to the others and said, "We've been pulling data off of it since two days ago. Most of it is incomprehensible until they can do more computer stuff to it. However, we were able to open a series of documents that look to be a journal."

"So we're reading someone's diary?" Xander asked, having forgotten the timidity from seconds ago. "Whose?"

Daniel paused for a moment at that question. Then, continued without acknowledging it. "Everything here is still preliminary, but some of the implications are staggering."

"So you don't know who?" Jack asked slowly.

"The file doesn't have a name on it, no," Daniel answered, exasperatedly. "So far, our best guess is that it was written by the Goa'uld in the monkey host that Xander encountered. He said the cache was his, right?"

"He said he was looking for his legacy," Xander answered with a shrug. "He never mentioned the cache specifically. Maybe his legacy was one of the staff weapons the jaffa had. Maybe that was why he stopped chasing us."

"Somehow I doubt that," Daniel commented dryly.

"It'd be funny though, right?' Xander asked with a grin. "Like a little twist."

"I doubt a Goa'uld would assault another Goa'uld's palace for a staff weapon," Daniel responded.

"I don't know, he seemed pretty touchy," Xander said earnestly. "I mean, he basically chased me through an entire labyrinth."

"And all you did was make him bite off a piece of his own body," Jack added.

"You make it sound like a bigger deal than it was," Xander shot back with a frown. "It wasn't even his real body… I bet he's forgotten all about it."

"That might be the most optimistic thing I've ever heard," Jack observed slowly. "And I've had to think up plans to octuple-handedly save the world from alien invasion."

"Eight people?" Xander asked, a bit surprised. "That's plenty."

"Eight hands," Jack corrected.

Xander frowned, then he shrugged.

"Either way, I think we should focus on what we can confirm…" Daniel's voice petered out and he adjusted his glasses before muttering, "A personal diary isn't exactly confirmation… But still! I think I've made a breakthrough on one of the most pressing questions we've had about the Goa'uld since meeting them."

"Why they're attracted to sexy women?" Jack asked, seeming to have forgotten his urgent pizza date. "That's always bothered me. They're snakes. They should be into bald people without noses."

"Like Voldemort," Xander responded, nodding his immediate understanding of that sentiment.

Jack merely furrowed his brow at that reference.

"Or Michael Jackson," Carter added after a second.

"Michael Jackson always had hair," Jack criticized.

"A curious question…" Daniel muttered, staring at the floor in thought. The he violently shook himself from his reverie. Replacing the glasses that were almost jiggled free from his face, he said, "No. I think you're the only person to ever ask that question… though, I'll look into it later…"

As Daniel spoke, Xander remembered something and shot his hand up, shouting, "Bathrooms!"

With all attention gathering on him once again, Xander sheepishly lowered his hand, explaining, "When I was in the facility I didn't find a single bathroom. I was wondering if Goa'uld even had to poop."

"I have seen many Goa'uld claim they do not," Teal'c's even voice cut in for the first time since the meeting began. "They say gods have no need of relieving themselves. However, while his first prime, I witnessed Apophis enter a hidden restroom in his private quarters."

"So they're Kim Jong-Iling it," Xander observed with a satisfied nod.

"I do not get the reference," Teal'c responded stoically.

"He's an evil clown in Korea," Jack explained with a wave of his hand.

"Like Pennywise," Teal'c observed, closing his eyes and giving one, deep nod. "He must be quite fearsome."

"I don't see how that could be any kind of mystery," Daniel responded with a shake of his head. "We've had Goa'uld in custody before. We know about heir bodily functions."

"Sorry if I've never watched a Goa'uld poop before," Xander replied, leaning back in his chair sullenly.

"You should be glad," Jack stated, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. "It's an unpleasant situation for everyone involved."

Daniel shuddered at that. Then he took charge of the meeting before anyone else could. "The question I'm talking about is the progress of Goa'uld civilization. For the last millennia, the Goa'uld have faced off with the Asgard and had continual internal strife. More than enough pressure to force societal and scientific development. In spite of this, they appear to have remained stagnant."

Growing increasingly impassioned, Daniel picked one of the information packets from the table and pointed to some of the illustrations as he continued, "Just looking at the architecture and hieroglyphics shows how little they've evolved. In the same time humans went from living in clay huts to building skyscrapers, the Goa'uld went from flying pyramid spaceships to flying pyramid spaceships. They haven't even token aesthetic changes as far as I can tell."

"I do feel like, after a few millennia, somebody would've realized how dumb it looks to have a giant gold pyramid in the middle of your space ship," Jack remarked, cradling his chin in his hand and resting his elbow on the table. "So gaudy."

"Or come up with some defense against throwing knives," Carter added, thoughtfully. "Most of the people who want to kill them are restricted to fighting with sticks and stones."

"You should never under estimate the power of sticks and stones," Xander cautioned.

"Exactly my point," Carter responded with a smile.

"The problem goes even farther than that," Daniel declared with the fervor of an expert who managed to wrangle the interests of some laymen. "Based on their current societal structure, the Goa'uld should never have made it into space. Even with the ancient's technology to reverse engineer, there would be no one to reverse engineer it. Think about it. There are almost no Goa'uld merchants, or doctors, or lawyers, or scientists. They're almost all feudal lords with people above them and people below them. They spend all their time either trying to increase or maintain their position in the ranks."

"You think having human slaves kept them from needing to develop?" Jack asked in one of his rare moments of genuine academic consideration.

"It certainly would've helped," Daniel answered with a shrug. "There's definitely a case to be made that slavery in human societies severely retarded technological development. However, that can't account for all of it. Even in slaver societies there is art. When was the last time you saw a Goa'uld statue that wasn't in their own honor?"

"Depends. Does it count as in their own honor if it's tacky?" Jack asked with a ridiculing grin.

"Do you have a conclusion to make, Dr. Jackson?" Hammond asked, his deep, commanding voice cutting through Daniel's fervor.

Daniel cleared his throat as he flipped through the pamphlet he was holding. When he found the desired page, he slapped it down on the table and pointed at a specific paragraph no one even pretended to start reading. "The journal we found in the data cache claims to be the from the last true Goa'uld engineer. The designer of the sarcophagus."

That last declaration left everyone except Daniel, Carter, and Xander to raise their eyebrows in shock.

"Can you verify that claim?" Hammond asked immediately.

"Not yet," Daniel answered earnestly. "However, the data cache itself seems beyond current Goa'uld data storage technology and I believe we'll find some corroboration when we can fully process the scientific data we're pulling from it." After Daniel gave his answer, he scanned the group for further questions before moving on.

After a few seconds of silence, Xander slowly raised his hand. "A sarcophagus is like a coffin, right? I'm not getting that wrong?"

"A sarcophagus is a Goa'uld device to extend life and heal all injuries," Jack answered nonchalantly.

"That sounds good," Xander responded, taking his turn at being shocked.

"It's also addictive and turns you evil," Daniel added.

"That sounds a lot less good… a lot." Privately, Xander wondered what it was like to be turned evil. He imagined it involved growing a mustache.

"No, not good at all," Daniel agreed sternly. "Back to the journal. As I said, the author claims to have created the first of the sarcophagi. He was excited by its potential, but also worried by the potential for interfering with mental processes he noted during animal and human testing. In order to gather conclusive data, he disseminated the technology throughout the Goa'uld elite. After a while, he observed what we have. A rise in narcissism and consequent reduction in value of all forms of life. An almost narcotic addiction to the machine itself. Moderate increase in risk taking behavior from the knowledge of immortality."

Daniel paused for a moment to grab a glass of water and wet his throat. Then he quickly scanned for the room's attention before continuing, "There was one side-effect the author noted that we haven't. The one side-effect that persuaded him to pursue different routes of experimentation. After continual exposure to the sarcophagi, individuals exhibited a complete destruction of creativity and mental flexibility. The author himself couldn't decide whether that was a natural consequence of the megalomania or a side-effect unto itself. However, it was supposedly very stark."

"So, becoming narcissistic and boring is why there are no Goa'uld accountants?" Jack asked, running his hand through his silver-grey hair and scratching the back of his head.

"I was always under the impression that creativity was the last thing you wanted in an accountant," Xander mused. "Legally speaking, at least."

"Alright, bad example," Jack responded with a shrug.

"This is very interesting, Doctor," Hammond started companionably. "However, I was hoping for something with a bit more application. That data cache was very expensive to recover."

"No one died to get it," Xander rebutted quickly. He was very proud of that fact. A team of three scientists and a mysterious stranger ran into space Bigfoot. By horror movie convention, Xander should've been the only one to survive. Then he would've walked off into the sunset with a girl who was there for some reason.

"Do you know how much the equipment you left behind cost?" Hammond asked, cutting through Xander's musing.

"Five sandwiches." Xander guessed firmly.

"You have a habit of eating gold bars, son?" Hammond asked back critically.

"…if I promise to stop throwing away computers, will you stop giving me that look?"

"I imagine the data cache will give us better information as time goes forward," Daniel cut in when he found the opportunity. "However, this revelation has given us some insight into how we've been able to do so well in the war against the Goa'uld. Never before have two cultures, with a technology gap as big as ours, clashed and had the more primitive come out on top."

"Primitive is offensive," Jack spoke up critically. "I'd rather be known as a Remedial American."

"Brain damage that impedes their creative thought would explain why Jack is able to run circles around them all the time," Daniel declared, ignoring Jack's words. "I mean, I have trouble keeping up with him sometimes and I am not a brain damaged mummy."

"So your big revelation from this was that you should keep doing what you've been doing?" Xander asked, a bemused smile spreading across his face.

"…but with more confidence," Daniel slowly declared with a distinct lack of confidence.

"It is always good to learn more about new enemies," Teal'c spoke up, his face remaining characteristically stony.

"Does he have to be our enemy?" Carter asked, turning hopeful eyes on the rest of the meeting. "He shuns the sarcophagus and doesn't seem to have a great relationship with the system lords, what with using them as guinea pigs. He's over halfway to becoming a Tok'ra."

"Xander did cut his tongue off," Jack observed.

"I didn't cut his tongue off," Xander rebutted defensively. "He cut his own tongue off. I just helped… a bit."

"And I'm sure he's so grateful for your assistance," Jack responded with one raised eyebrow.

"…He was hard to make out after, but I don't think he was." The thought of potentially sparking a third front in their galactic war made Xander's heart sink.

"The Tok'ra don't experiment on their own people," Hammond declared. "Based on Xander's account, he didn't sound particularly kind towards humans. I think it's best to regard the ape man as a potential enemy, but not to engage unless first provoked. I'll release and announcement to that effect. Now, if neither of you have anything else-"

Just as Hammond was about to dismiss the meeting, an alarm started to play over the base's loud speakers. At first Xander had no reaction to this. He'd grown used to people coming and going through the gate over the past few weeks. Then he realized that it sounded slightly different from what he was used to.

Xander turned questioning eyes towards Jack, who immediately answered, "Someone is breaking into the base."

Author's Note:

Sorry for the late and short uploads. Don't really have an excuse, but I apologize. Also, don't expect it to change any time soon since the Destiny 2 Beta is this week. So, I'll see you IF I see you this week… Yeah… I'll try my best.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Turning away from Xander, Colonel Jack O'Neill looked towards General Hammond as the alarm reached a crescendo and restarted.

Hammond met Jack's gaze and stood from his chair before saying, "First we should figure out what's going on."

He then led the group to the security office a few doors down from them. Upon entering the room, Sg-1 and co. were greeted by two exteremly anxious and confused servicemen.

"What's the situation," Hammond demanded before Jack had the opportunity.

"Umm… we're not sure," one of the men sitting at the monitors in front of them said, quivering slightly when he noticed to whom he as speaking. "Something broke through from the surface. Base security went to confront it, but every team that's met it had gone silent."

"What're we dealing with here?" Jack asked, leaning in to get a better view of the security monitors. The screens showed a black and white display of a few servicemen in defensive positions in a base hallway. Jack knew what they were supposed to be, but on the monitors they were barely distinguishable from pixelated blobs. He really felt like a top secret government base should be supplied with better cameras.

"There's no way it's human," the second guard spoke up, interrupting Jack's musings. "It moves so fast. It's just a blur and then the men fall down."

As Jack puzzled at the explanation, basically exactly that played out on the monitor before him. A blurry, pixelated thing crossed into the view of the camera and collided with one of the pixelated servicemen. Then he collapsed. The others attempted to raise their weapons at the blur, but it was on them too fast and they couldn't even fire for worry of shooting each other.

Watching that scene play out, Jack bit his lip. "Whatever it is, we can't let it get to the gate," he declared. Summoning a grim determination, Jack grabbed one of the Zats hung on the back wall. Then he left the room before the General or his teammates could talk him out of it.

Free from the confines of the dark security office, Jack was running down one of the base's hallways, headed towards the entrance. Whatever the intruder was, it didn't seem to know the base. However, if he just kept moving towards the top levels, eventually their paths should cross.

As Jack considered that, he finally noticed a set of footsteps echoing through the hallway directly behind him. When he turned to look, he found Xander's eye-patched face looking back at him. The boy was keeping pace with Jack and he held his own Zat in his right hand.

"The rest of your team should be headed to the armory," Xander answered Jack's unasked question.

"Then I guess we'll have to hold the line until we get there," Jack responded with a smile.

"I don't think I'm qualified for that," Xander declared, showing his own grin. "I'm a civilian contractor. The best I can do is prop up the line."

"Then that'll have to do," Jack replied, turning back to face forward.

After the two moved up three flights of stairs, they could hear brief bursts of gunshots which all came to abrupt ends. Shifting their direction slightly, they headed for that sound. A few seconds later, they started to hear thuds and groans as men were seemingly being thrown into walls and slammed into the floor.

Jack quickened his pace and Xander followed suit. Then they rounded a corner and saw it… her. A girl. She couldn't be older than twenty five. She had brown, shoulder length hair and was wearing depressingly unpractical shoes. That alone would make her a curiosity on a secret military base. Add in the fact that she was currently holding up a 200 lbs. serviceman by his collar and even Jack had to be taken aback.

Before Jack could decide she was the tenth Goa'uld to be secretly hiding on earth, Xander stepped forward and called out, "Faith…?"

That drew the woman's attention and, as soon as she met Xander's eye, she echoed the sentiment. Taking two steps towards them, she muttered, "Xander?"

Looking alternately between the two, it was obvious there was some kind of history. For the time being, however, safe was better than sorry. In a long practiced motion, Jack readied the zat and pulled the trigger. After the blue flow of electricity struck the girl, it traversed her body a few times before she finally collapsed onto the floor.

Opening her eyes, Faith found herself in a small concrete room dominated by what was certainly a one-way mirror and a single metal table with three chairs. It wasn't her first time sitting at such a table. It wasn't her first time having her hands cuffed to said table. However, this time she wasn't there for anything illegal… well, not for anything bad-guyish at least.

"I see you're up. Feeling all right?" The grey-haired gentleman sitting across from her asked when he saw her moving. He was handsome enough and wore a gentile smile that had a charming quality to it. Of course, all of that was blown away by the uniform he was wearing. No way she would trust someone from the government. Especially in this situation.

For a moment, Faith weighed her options. She had a lot of them, in spite of her situation. That had been a fundamental fact for most of Faith's life. She always made sure to have a lot of options. In this specific instance, though, she was only here for one reason. May as well focus on that first.

"Where's Xander?" She demanded, narrowing her eyes to give him a glare. This was the look that always made vamps and the literal type of horny men all cower. Normal dudes, on the other hand, only ever responded with a bemused smile. Good for getting the drop on them, but not good for getting information. Not without breaking a few of their teeth first… that was probably a thought she wasn't supposed to have anymore.

"He had a bit of an accident," Mr. Smiley answered, neither showing her fear or bemusement. Merely continuing to grin at her. "You know how slippery stairs can get sometimes."

"If anyone were to fall and break their hip, I would've guessed it be you," Faith responded, crossing her arms and leaning back as far as her restraints would let her.

The smile slowly faded from the man's face and he leaned forward to stare straight into her eyes before saying, "Has anyone ever taught you that words can hurt?"

For a moment, Faith's mind went blank. Up until this point, she'd never met a fed or G.I. or whatever that wasn't entirely predictable. In fact, most people were entirely predictable.

"I'm not that old," the old man continued, leaning back once again. "Still in the prime of my life."

"If you're in your prime, would that make me a newborn?" Faith asked catching up with the conversation on her second attempt.

"You're just being mean for no reason at this point," the man decried in mock dejection.

"I have plenty of reasons."

"Daddy issues?"

"I'm an ex-con and a high school dropout," Faith declared with a roll of her eyes. "What do you think?"

"I think this is starting to sound familiar… except the ex-con part… or the high school dropout thing." He frowned at himself before lamely finishing, "I guess it's the same in spirit?"

"You've lost me," Faith declared, unfolding her arms to run her fingers through her hair.

As the man was about to respond, the room's door was flung open and Xander easily stepped into the room asking, "Did I miss anything?"

"The third step," the man answered without a moment's thought.

"I didn't miss it! Something tripped me!" Xander cried out, flailing his one ambulatory arm.

"You tripped yourself, kid."

Faith looked over this interaction curiously. Xander still seemed to be in one piece, at least. Well, there was the eye. Plus, he was in a cast, but he had a habit of breaking himself since long ago. Besides, his head seemed about as functional as it normally was. Though that wasn't saying much.

Having finished his exchange with the older man, Xander slowly turned towards Faith. Suddenly, he felt a lot less self-assured and a lot more awkward. He refused to make eye contact, slightly raising his working arm in a wave before saying, "Hey, Faith. How ya doin'?"

"Not the best," Faith answered, raising her wrists to show of the restraints.

"To be fair, you did break into a military base," Xander responded sheepishly. "That wasn't the best of ideas."

"And who's fault was that, do you think?"

"…I guess there aren't a lot of reasons for you to bust into a mountain in Colorado Springs."

"Nah, I just wanted to stay up on my fashion." Faith shot back sarcastically. "Get myself one of those bitchin green shirts."

"I could get you one if you want," Xander attempted with a smile.

Faith responded with a cold glare.

Xander sighed and turned to back to the older man. "Jack, could we have some privacy?"

"Relationship drama?" the man asked with a mocking grin. "You know, I can… I'm really not qualified at all to help you with that, actually."

"I was thinking more super-secret discussions," Xander responded calmly.

The man gave a light chuckle at the phrasing. Then a light of understanding flashed in his eyes and he nodded before standing and saying, "I'll see what I can do for you."

"Thanks," Xander replied, watching as the man left the room.

Once they were alone, Xander walked over to one of the chairs and quickly dragged it to a corner of the small room. Standing on top of it, he reached up to fiddle with the camera above him. After a few seconds of smooth and self-assured work, he stopped and let his hand fall back to his side.

"They always unplug them in the movies. When they're like going to have a secret talk of something," Xander gave Faith a helpless look as he spoke. Then he turned his gaze back up to the camera before adding, "That's really wired in there. I don't think there're any plugs at all."

"It's when they're going to beat people that they unplug the cameras," Faith observed slowly.

"So you think they have special beating rooms where they can be unplugged?" Xander asked hopefully. "Should we go ask for a transfer?"

Faith simply raised one eyebrow in response.

Seeing that, Xander hurriedly waved his hand in front of him, saying, "Not that I was planning on… obviously…"

As Xander struggled to defend himself, the lights in the room suddenly switched off, leaving them in darkness. Then, the one-way mirror became a lot less mirrored as the lights in the room behind it flipped on.

Inside the newly visible room stood the grey haired man alone. He gave a couple waves. Then he leaned forward to press the intercom. "I've turned off the camera," he declared loudly.

"'Kay, Thanks," Xander shouted back at the glass. Then he hopped off the chair, dragged it back to the table, and took a seat. "So… What're you doing here?" he asked, still visibly uncomfortable in the conversation.

"Why do you think?" Faith asked the same question again.

"I guess people were worried or whatever, but why?"

"You haven't called them in a month and a half and you're surprised they worried?" Faith asked, shaking her head at his idiocy.

"That's hardly unprecedented. They've never wigged out before. Not this much before."

"Maybe you just weren't there for it," Faith responded, trying out an accusatory glance. Then she shrugged and added, "Plus, you hadn't moved from Colorado Springs in all that time."

"Wait, did they place a GPS tracker on me?" Xander asked, leaning forward incredulously.

"Willow placed some wards. I thought you knew about that."

"I thought those ran out a long time ago…" Xander responded thoughtfully, settling back into his seat.

"Apparently you disappeared for like ten hours a few weeks ago before reappearing back in Colorado Springs. That's when she started to get really worried." Faith remembered the tone Willow had used when asking for this favor. She wondered if she could properly communicated that desperate anxiety to this fool… or if that was even her job.

"Three weeks is a long time to sit on something like that," Xander observed.

"Buffy and them have been busy trying to stop a cult from opening a portal to the sun."

"Why?" Xander asked incredulously.

"Because if they didn't, the whole earth would get burned up."

"No, I meant the other one,"

Faith shrugged. "Why do cults do anything?"

"Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?" Xander ventured.

"Point is, they were busy." Faith got them back on track while shaking some of her hair out of her face. "So Willow asked me to check in when I was coming back from some work of my own."

"…I guess that makes sense," Xander answered before falling into an uncomfortable silence.

"Now it's my turn," Faith declared, sitting up and leaning over the cold, metallic table. "What's going on here, Xander? Why are you under a mountain, wearing military fatigues?"

"Well, when you live under a mountain your wardrobe options are limited," Xander answered with his typical deflecting smile.

"What's going on, Xander?" Faith asked persistently. "Walking around military bases, telling people to give you private interviews. You aren't going all… whoever… on us, are you?"

"Whoever?"

"You guys told me about it, but I wasn't there for the initiative stuff. I don't remember any of their names."

"Fair enough…" Xander responded with a faint smile. Then it faded from his face as he continued, "And no. This isn't some initiative 2: electric boogaloo."

"So what is it, then?"

"I can't tell you."

Faith raised a critical eyebrow, but Xander remained strong.

"I can't tell you about them in the same way I can't tell them about what you are."

"And here I thought we were friends… mostly friends…

"You can be loyal to two people at the same time." Xander declared, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You can't. It even says so in the Bible." Faith dismissed with a wave of her hand. "You can't suck two dicks at once."

"That sentence is nowhere in the Bible."

"It's the same sentiment."

"Also, logistically you can… really depends on how well the two guys get along."

"Xander, what's going on?" Faith attempted again, this time narrowing her eyes and staring with a little more pressure.

"I'm not scared of you, Faith," Xander declared, his voice audibly raising a couple octaves.

Faith remained silent and continued to stare at him.

"I'm not telling you anything," Xander continued obstinately, turning his face away from her. "All I'll say is that they're doing important work and I decided to help them a bit. At least for a while."

"And that has nothing to do with vampires and demons?"

"Nothing," Xander answered, turning back to stare directly into Faith's eyes.

Faith pursed her lips and then stretched as much as her restraints would allow before asking, "So this is your retirement? Hunting down terrorists in Colorado?"

"…Something like that."

"And that's what I'm going to tell Willow?"

"Tell her I'm doing fine."

"You have a broken arm," Faith pointed out, gesturing towards the cast.

"…She doesn't need to know about that."

Faith couldn't help giving a light nod in response to that. Willow really didn't need to worry any more than she already was.

After a few seconds of more comfortable silence, Xander stood up and said, "These people are pretty used to bending rules and you didn't do any permanent damage. I think I can get them to let you go. Especially with Reilly's help."

"Is that it?" Faith asked with a slight frown.

"The longer you're here, the harder it'll be to pretend you never were," Xander answered with a shrug. "It's been nice seeing you, though and I appreciate the rescue attempt. Even if it wasn't needed."

"Somehow that feels really patronizing," Faith complained bitterly.

"Yeah, I couldn't think of a way to say it where it wouldn't," Xander responded. Then he took a couple steps towards the door before stopping to add, "If you end up spending the night in town, there's a dinner on the east side that has pretty good eggs. You should try them out."

With that, he exited the room and Faith was left alone. After about an hour of solitary confinement, some nervous servicemen came to release her and escort her off the base. Once she was back in her car, she weighed her options before moving to look up the nearest motel. Something fishy was going on. Too many mind control eggs and things existed for her to take Xander at his words.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Xander gently closed the interrogation room door behind him. Then he paused and looked down towards his feet. He was still wrestling with untiring pangs of guilt that he had to force down. He really should've contacted Willow sooner. He still should contact her. Talking to Faith didn't count as a proper phone call…

He just couldn't figure how to tell them what was happening with him. He still couldn't. Not without using any specific verbs, nouns, or adjectives. It definitely wasn't that he was avoiding anyone. He'd been busy. Getting training and certification. All that.

As Xander was wiggling his way towards self-deceit, the sound of another door opening heralded the arrival of Jack. Raising his head to look at the Colonel, Xander attempted an apologetic smile.

Jack grinned back and asked, "So, who was that, exactly?"

"An old friend," Xander answered immediately. Even as the word came out of his mouth, he questioned it. He hadn't seen much of Faith since the Hellmouth collapsed. Back then their relationship was still a bit rocky from all the murder and stuff. However, he'd heard good things over the past year. At least, she shouldn't get too mad to hear him call her a friend.

Oblivious to Xander's internal turmoil, jack asked, "And that's the most the most relevant thing about her?"

"To me, it is." Xander answered, falling in step beside Jack as they both headed for Hammond's office.

"So, what is it about your friendship that makes her able to juggle men three times her size?"

"I'm really good at being supportive."

"I'm sure."

"Plus, I have heard that friendship is magic."

"Xander…" Jack responded, looking to Xander's eyes skeptically.

"I'm not going to talk about other people's personal stuff," Xander answered with a shrug. "We already agreed to that a while back."

"I don't think this counts as personal stuff," Jack grumbled with a shake of his head. "How am I supposed to explain this to Hammond?"

"P.C.P.?" Xander asked hopefully.

"You want him to believe that a drug addict was able to single-handedly break into a secret military base simply because she was on P.C.P.?"

"It's always worked so far."

"We're hardly the type to hide from what we don't understand," Jack replied persuasively.

Xander shrugged and said, "We can always call up Riley again. His connections should work just as well for her as they did for me."

Jack's face brightened for a second. Then he frowned and said, "If you want to work here, that won't work forever. Eventually Hammond will start asking questions. He doesn't love getting lectured by the Secretary of Defense. Especially since it'll be completely your fault this time."

"Can we present it in a way where it isn't my fault?"

"Even I try to limit myself to fibs."

"Somehow I find that hard to believe…"

The pair fell into silence for a few seconds. Then Jack asked, "So, your friends are worried about you?"

"That's what you took away from that?" Xander asked, waving his hand dismissively. "Nah. She just broke in for… fun…?"

"Convincing."

"I know I am," Xander responded, proudly puffing up his chest.

"She came all this way for you, you should at least spend some time catching up… or look back on things, at least. Catching up might be hard with all the confidentiality."

"Our relationship is complicated. We don't-" In the midst of his sentence, Xander furrowed his brow and reconsidered what he was saying. "Actually, we have a lot to reminisce about, but it's a bit strange."

"I guess I can't hope you'll elaborate on that any further?"

Xander thought over the history of his relationship with Faith. From taking his virginity to the murder stuff, it was all very… "Personal," Xander shot out quickly.

"I figured as much…" Jack grumbled. Then he shrugged and continued, "Either way, you can't just expect her to go home like this. I don't know about your mystic stuff, but I've experienced too much possession and mind control to simply accept that someone like you joined the military and 'oh no, it's fine, don't worry.'"

"It's not like…" The soupy memories of the band candy incident threatened to resurge before Xander violently shoved them back down. "Yeah, I wouldn't accept it either. Did you have some plan to convince her?"

"The three of us can get together and do something together. If she gets to know me and sees that I'm harmless, she should stop worrying so much."

"Why do I feel like you have an ulterior motive here?" Xander asked, choosing to ignore the "harmless" part.

"You're both vampire hunters and Colorado Springs has no professional supernatural exterminators. I figured we could make use of your talents and bond at the same time. Like a hunting date for the three of us."

"Everything you just said sounds weird," Xander responded, crinkling his nose at the thought. "Like my dad was offering to be my chaperone… well, not MY dad, but someone's."

"We protect people and get to know each other at the same time. It kills two birds with one stone," Jack pressed on. "Besides, I have some things I want to try out."

"I thought we agreed you would forget about vampires," Xander responded raising one eyebrow critically.

"I agreed to not go hunting on my own or attempt to start any military initiatives," Jack declared defensively. "I've done neither of those things. I've just been thinking about it. I mean, vampires can't be killed by normal gunfire, but they can be killed by decapitation. So what about anti-materiel weapons? They're designed to stop armored vehicles and machine gun placements. They can really fuck a human body up."

"And you're planning to fire one of these in downtown Colorado Springs?"

"Okay… maybe not." Jack answered, deflating a little before immediately springing back. "The best thing would be Zats. They can disintegrate anything in three hits. Disintegration includes decapitation, I think… technically."

"Anything?" Xander asked skeptically.

"Anything," Jack answered with a confident nod.

"Then why don't you use them to take down Goa'uld motherships? Seems better than conventional methods. No muss. No fuss."

"Ok, so not anything, but almost anything," Jack responded, losing little of his enthusiasm. "It's worth a try. If it works, I don't mind misplacing a few zats for your friends. So long as they don't ask where it came from."

"Ok, we'll do it together, but only so you don't try it by yourself."

"You don't want to risk me becoming a vampire-holic when I'm older?"

"I think the correct term would be a vampaholic, and yes," Xander answered with a broad smile as Jack pushed open the door to Hammond's office.

* * *

Sitting against the statue of a weeping angel, Faith watched the mist slowly gathering over the soft loam of the cemetery. She didn't understand the mechanisms behind it, but it seemed to be a fundamental law of the universe that cemetery where shit was about to go down generated mist from nothing. It'd been clear all day today. Almost annoyingly sunny, but as soon as the moon rose and she got in place, the mist was there.

Immediately growing weary of the unanswerable question, Faith focused her attention elsewhere. It'd been three days since Xander had called her and proposed the idea of this field trip. That meant three days sleeping on a lumpy mattress in that off-brand motel. It also meant three nights hitting up the local demon population for information.

Hitting for information might be a better phrase. Honestly, it was pretty depressing to see how little of her reputation made it out here. It seemed she was still playing second fiddle to the "real" slayer. The slayer so good at her job that she's already died at it twice. Not that she was bitter or anything… not really.

Not that she would've gotten much if she was the first itself. You can't intimidate information out pf people if they don't have it in the first place. The military didn't come down to mess with the demons and the demons didn't go up the mountain. One particularly nervous piggy fellow kept saying something about bad feelings or bad juju or something. Whatever it was, he wasn't very credible, so Faith didn't remember it.

After that failed, she even tried talking to the less occult locals, but all they would say was that it was for looking at telemetry. Faith didn't even need to look up what that meant to know it had nothing to do with Xander. Obviously a cover. Thus, she was left with no information worth talking about. The whole military base was one big nothing. Reminded her of the whole Area 51 conspiracy, except real.

After Faith had finished cataloging her non-information, she saw the beam of headlights illuminate the fog. That mean Xander and his special guest were coming. That or a few high school students had gotten drunk enough to come get in their way. Faith really hoped for the previous. As entertaining as it can be to watch cheerleaders meet their first vampires, she couldn't afford it tonight. Plus, the hard stone was starting to make her ass hurt. She was tired of waiting around.

Thankfully, after about a minute, a familiar little pirate appeared from the mist. When he saw Faith siting on her perch, he waved his hand and said, "Isn't that a little sacrilegious?"

"I read the bible once," Faith responded pushing off the monument to land gracefully on the dirt below. "It doesn't say anything about gravestones. Not once."

"You didn't really strike me as the bible reading type," Xander's silver haired friend remarked as he made his appearance.

"Well, when vampires are actually hurt by two pits of wood stapled together, you'd be a fool not to check it out," Faith responded with a shrug. "Plus, I went through a period where I had a lot of free time."

"I've heard that it can be hard to find work without a diploma," the silver-haired man responded with a painfully sympathetic tone.

"Yeah… something like that…"

"Anyway," Xander cut in with a clap of his hands before the conversation could turn weird. Then he turned to Faith and asked, "You said you had a lead on some vamps?"

Meeting his eye, Faith nodded and turned to wave her arm towards the depths of the cemetery. "Supposedly a couple was turned while doing one of those teen make-out things from the movies. They should be in here somewhere, but I don't know which grave exactly."

She also didn't know their names or if the info was trustworthy at all. However, the demon fed it to her to make up for his complete uselessness on the military thing. If it turned out to be a lie, he would find himself with a lot less teeth come morning time. Also, a lot less life.

"So we don't have any clues about who they are?" the silver haired man asked, his voice tinged with a bit of nervousness.

That meant he wasn't comfortable with the idea of accidentally killing civilians. Not something one would generally point out as an outstanding virtue, but Faith found it a welcome revelation. It also meant he wasn't very familiar with hunting vampires. Both a good and bad thing. Depending how you looked at it.

"We'll be fine. Look around a bit and if we meet anyone particularly fangy, we can ask some questions," Faith reassured him easily.

"Questions like how do you like your steak? …Through the heart?" Xander added happily.

"Yeah, like that, except much more suave."

"James bond was suave…" Xander complained under his breath.

"Bond spent half his existence as the sexiest member of the three stooges," Faith responded critically.

"Heresy!" Xander shouted in mock outrage.

"I never said that was a bad thing," Faith responded with a smile before moving deeper into the cemetery.

"James Bond is the coolest man to ever exist," Xander complained, following after her. "I'm pretty sure that's in the dictionary."

"Dictionaries also define Vampires as myths," the silver-haired man added helpfully.

"Traitor," Xander spat out bitterly.

"Did you ever see the sticking the bomb up the guy's ass scene?" Faith called back to them. "I'm pretty sure that was the definition of slapstick."

"…everyone has their bad days…" Xander muttered weakly.

"and I've never sodomized someone with an explosive," Faith rebutted effortlessly.

"You haven't yet. Give it time," silver-hair corrected.

"You're about to die," Faith shot back. "How many times have you explosively sodomized people?"

"It depends on your definition of explosive," silver-hair responded with a broad grin.

"Gross," Xander declared.

"Also, don't say people are about to die. It's rude."

"You're not my dad," Faith complained. "You don't get to tell me what I can and can't say,"

"That's exactly the kind of thing someone would say to their dad," silver hair observed.

"No, it's something people say to their step-dad," Xander corrected.

"Is there a difference?" Silver-hair asked.

"If there wasn't, there wouldn't be two separate words," Faith declared, waving her hand through the air emphatically.

"The words judge and mother-in law both exist," Silver hair rebutted happily. "English is a funny language that way."

"When did we enter a sit-com from the eighties?" Faith complained, rolling her eyes at the stale joke.

"I live in a sit-com from the _nineties_ , thank you very much," Silver-hair shouted, putting his hands on his hips dramatically.

"Wait," Xander called out with a sudden urgency, holding up his hand to silence them.

Faith followed his direction and pricked her ears. Faintly she heard the familiar sound of an animal desperately clawing through dirt. Technically, it could be considered an animal… probably.

Faith turned to her left and headed for the noise. At the same time, the other two seemed to come to the same conclusion she had. In less than a minute, all three of them found themselves standing before a simple gravestone as a small patch of disturbed earth formed in front of it. A few seconds later, a pale hand dusted thoroughly with dirt shot up from the earth.

Seeing this, Faith nonchalantly stepped forward to do her job. Before she could move a foot, however, Xander held out an arm to stop her. Then he turned to silver-hair and said, "Jack, you can try it if you want."

"Thanks," Xander's friend way too old friend, Jack, said as he reached under his coat and pulled out something that looked like a gun, but not at all. "It's going to be amazing. Revolutionary. You'll see."

"I'm not going to hold my breath," Xander responded with a shake of his head.

As Faith was left to wonder at the meaning of their exchange, the newly born vampire finally liberated most of its torso from its grave. It looked like any vampire she'd seen in all her years of slaying. Subtype 2: high school boy. It was hard to see past the wasp-victim face and sharp fangs, so they all blended together.

When the vampire's hunger-crazed, yellow eyes landed upon the buffet in front of him, he pulled the rest of his body up with one lurch. Then he immediately charged forward to partake of the feast. Before he could make it two steps, Jack fired his weapon. At least Faith presumed that was what happened.

A blue streak of lighting flew from Jack's pseudo gun and struck the vampire's chest before pulsing through its entire body. In spite of that, the vampire didn't stop and Jack quickly fired two more shots of lighting into it. As soon as the third bolt hit, the vampire recoiled. It threw up its hands unconsciously and stepped back as if it were retreating from a raging fire.

The vampire remained in that position, unmoving, for about thirty seconds. Then he looked down at himself, as if confirming that his body was still in one piece. Once he had, he looked at Jack, narrowed his eyes, and charged.

Jack, still surprised at the effects of his weapon, was slow to react. He was still trying to wrestle a stake free from his jacket as the vampire was almost on top of him. Seeing this, Faith stepped in between the two men. Simply shoving her palm into the vampire's chest, he was sent tumbling backwards.

The vampire landed flat on its back a few feet away, his chest completely exposed. Xander didn't ignore that fact and quickly moved in with his stake. As the vampire sighed itself into dust, Jack freed the stake from his jacket and turned on the concluded scene with a sheepish expression.

Faith looked down at the strange, snake-like gun in Jack's left hand and said, "It's pretty hard to stop a vampire in its track, what with already being dead and all. What is that thing?"

"A new type of Taser," Jack answered unconvincingly as he shoved the gun back under his jacket.

Faith's eyes lingered on the bulge that was barely visible on the small of his back as she asked, "A Taser that works on vampires?"

"Not what it was made for," Xander cut in with that smile he had when he was breathing. "But it's quite the Taser."

Faith narrowed her eyes at the two skeptically as she noted that Jack was disappointed with the "Taser's" performance. She said nothing else about it, however.

Jack thanked Faith and Xander alternately for their help. Then the trio set off again. It'd be convenient as hell for her if graves were all organized chronologically. However, too often people wanted to be next to their family or whatever. That meant more wandering around looking for where that guy's girlfriend would pop up from.

As they patrolled, Faith finally asked the big question. "You're supposed to be working on telemetry stuff, right? Why would you need an experimental Taser and a… weirdo carpenter pirate?"

"I'm not a weirdo," Xander spoke up defensively. "At least, I don't want to be called that by you."

"Pirate you're okay with, though?" Jack asked curiously.

"I don't see the problem," Xander responded, turning a bright smile towards the older man. "I've got the eyepatch and everything. See?"

"You really think that's the only thing that it takes to be a pirate?"

"I don't think the parrot is _absolutely_ necessary," Xander responded thoughtfully.

"I think you need to look up the definition of pirate."

"I don't really want to ascribe to the straw-hat model…"

"I don't think I even want to know what that is."

"You two completely derailed that instantly," Faith observed, raising her eyebrows at the pair. "Almost like you don't want to answer me."

"What was the question again?" Xander asked, inclining his head.

"Well… the whole telemetry thing…:" Jack responded, looking off into the distance. Faith could almost see the gears turning in his head as he constructed a credible lie. "It's a cover. Since we actually work on secret weapons development research. We don't want foreign spies to know to break in here, so we keep it very secret."

"And you need Xander for this?"

"Your friend has a surprisingly detailed knowledge on medieval weaponry, did you know that?" Jack answered, smiling as he fell into his groove. "Our scientists have found that very inspiring for developing new concepts based on old principles."

"So that lightning gun is based on a crossbow?" Faith asked, about as convinced of Jack's story as the pope is the existence of Vishnu.

"No, that was completed before he joined the team," Jack answered with a shake of his head.

"So you're a member of DARPA now, Xander?" Faith asked, turning her skeptical gaze towards Xander.

"Civilian contractor, technically," Xander responded as his eye went searching for excuses. "But I do like the work. You know, if we can find a weapon that can kill vamps and demons easily, it could save a lot of the slayerlings lives."

"Hmmm." Faith gave a critical sigh, but she knew outright contradicting them wouldn't get her anything, so she held back. Before she could circumvent the conversation to ask another damning question, the group heard the familiar burrowing noise of a vampire's birth and chased after it.

This time, they arrived just as the young, disfigured girl rose fully from her grave. Once again, Jack moved out in front. However, rather than a strange snake gun, he held a stake before him. "I want to at least try it," he called out as he readied himself for battle.

"…go crazy," Faith responded with a lethargic shrug. Maybe she was getting too proud, but she was confident that she could save the man from a normal vamp before he got properly done in. Besides, he seemed to know how to stand, at least.

Again, the vampire focused on her target and made a pathetically simplistic charge. As the vampire approached in a straight line, Jack pivoted his body and leapt forward, shoulder first. The vampire may have had supernatural strength, but she still had the body and knowledge of a teenage girl. Difference in mass is important in a fight. Especially when one side doesn't know what the hell its doing. The vampire was struck squarely by Jack's shoulder and spun 90 degrees before falling into a pile with the man on the ground.

Before the vampire could adapt to the situation its excited hunger wouldn't let it anticipate, Jack victoriously lifted his two hands clutching the stake. Then he brought it down right onto her chest… at which point, the stake marvelously shattered into splinters. Receiving an unpleasantly seeping wound on her chest, the vampire instinctively kicked out, sending Jack flying backwards four feet before he rolled to a stop against a tombstone.

"You have to hit the heart," Faith advised, grabbing a spare stake from her boot and tossing it onto the ground in front of Jack's prone form. "Unless you had the motivation knocked out of you… which is understandable."

"I've got this," Jack answered breathlessly as he grabbed the stake and forced himself to his feet.

"You know, this is all pointless," Xander declared unhelpfully. "You aren't supposed to be fighting vampires anyway."

"And what if I run into one in an alley?" Jack asked, slowly recovering his breath.

"Run away," Xander answered bluntly.

Before Jack could rebut that point, the vampire had made the decision to continue her ill-fated hunt. Back on her feet with rage burning in her eyes, she charged again. With much the same result. It turned out, getting mad didn't suddenly make you a better fighter. It just you reckless. The vampire was taught this lesson with another painful stab into her chest. This time, the stake made it a good few inches into her body before a loud cracking sound signaled it snapping clean in half.

"What the hell!?" Jack cried out in frustration.

"It probably got caught on a rib," Faith observed thoughtfully. "It's made out of wood, you have to remember that. Just hammer the tip in diagonally. As long as it stabs the heart, she's done."

"You make this! Look so! Easy!" Jack shouted out, his phrases punctuated by a full body swing as he tried to force the stake's tip further into the vampire's chest.

"Practice makes perfect," Faith answered with a shrug, her words barely audible over the hisses and shrieks of the tortured vampire.

After around the fifth strike, the wood finally found the vampire's heart and she crumpled into dust which flew up and coated Jack's sweaty face. "I don't think I want any practice at this," he remarked bitterly as he tried to wipe off some of the dead woman's ashes.

"That's what I've been saying from the beginning," Xander declared critically, reaching down to pull the older man to his feet.

After that Faith couldn't collect any more useful information from the pair. Originally they'd planned to go out for drinks after, but Jack seemed uncomfortable being covered in an atomized corpse and that was postponed for showering purposes.

When Faith returned to her rundown motel, she flopped onto her bed and thought back about what she'd experienced over the night. She couldn't believe what Xander was involved in was the initiative 2.0. The demons would've known more about it and that required Jack to be really great at pretending to know nothing about the most common demon in existence. At the same time, there was no way Xander would even be allowed to breathe the air extracted from a DARPA lab. His willful idiocy would corrupt its very foundations. Plus, there'd be way too many numbers involved for him to consider doing it for a second.

That left Faith where she'd started. She knew something fishy was going on, but she had no clue as to what type of fish. That problem annoyed her a little bit. Plus, there was no slayer within fifty miles. That meant she had something to keep her busy in the meantime.


End file.
